You Don't Know My Mind
by incendioctober
Summary: Sometimes, you don't even know your own mind. Warning: Rating M from Chapter 13!
1. Prologue & Chapter 1

**Okay, so I wrote this originally for National Novel Writing Month, and I haven't really done much editing since, so I apologise if it is really abysmal. I haven't written anything in quite a while, but I'm hoping to finish this off, and hoping that posting it on here will give me the incentive to do so. Also, I apologise in advance that the chapters are so long - at the time I was going for writing as much as humanly possible.**

**I apologise for a seemingly extremely slow start, but I'm hoping you'll all like it all the same. I'm posting the Prologue and the first Chapter at the same time, seen as the Prologue isn't very long!**

**It's supposed to be set after House comes out of Mayfield - he has his medical licence back and Taub/Thirteen never left, however him and Wilson don't yet know about Cuddy and Lucas. Oh, and Chase and Cameron are still living happily ever after and working at the hospital!**

**I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for reading!  
><strong>

**Prologue**

He clenched his hand tightly into a fist and gripped hard onto the fabric of the pillow, not quite sure if he was awake or asleep. The darkness was so thick, his view was no different even when he forced open his eyes, and the silence was deafeningly still. Nothing to distract him, nothing to take away from the pain that had awoken him from his slumber. It was almost like knives were piercing every inch of skin covering what was left of his right thigh muscle, before cleaving deep wounds, burning with agonising pain. He braced himself, burying his face deep into the feather pillow, stifling any gasp of pain almost to the point of suffocation. It was at this time every night that he asked himself why he'd ever willingly invited the crippling pain to haunt him once again. And it was at this time every night he answered himself – because if he inhaled deeply enough into his bed sheets he could still smell her on them. He closed his eyes once more, the memory of his fantasy almost as painful as his leg, and begged the darkness to swallow him and sleep to take him once more. There was a long night ahead. Long, and alone.

* * *

><p>Guilt was something she succumbed to very easily – it was her nemesis, and had been ever since she'd been able to understand the concept of responsibility. Staring at the ceiling, she was forcing her eyes open as her ritual act of punishment to herself. She knew he wouldn't be sleeping, and she felt responsible for this, therefore she wouldn't sleep either. It was in some ways masochistic, it relieved her guilt and her burden when she felt she had endured the same punishment she had bestowed upon him. Tossing and turning, she wrapped the duvet tightly around her as if she was trapped in some sort of cage – yet it somehow made her feel less alone. Fighting with sleep, she was losing the battle and just as it lead her into the depth of dreams, a baby cried, and she jolted awake. The digital clock to her bedside blinked a green glow of 4:54am, and she surrendered her dreams to attend to her baby girl.<p>

Dressed only in her silk night gown, Lisa Cuddy climbed out of her tangled mess of bed sheets and tread the familiar path to the room of her little girl, Rachel. It was a journey she'd made so many times before in the dead of night; it was imprinted in her mind and no longer required any amount of thought, memory, or light. She reached the wooden barrier of the cot, the only thing separating her from her daughter, reached in and brought the crying small child into her arms, cradling her to the warm body of her mother.

"Ssssh, there there Rachel, mommy's got you. I know darling, I know you're hungry, just give me a second." She was well aware her daughter had no grasp or understanding of her words, she was speaking mostly to herself, merely for company, and self-assurance. Her surroundings were slowly coming in to focus as her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she let out a long sigh of exhaustion. There was a long day ahead. Long, and alone.

**I**

As difficult as many people find it to separate and compartmentalise their life, it was something Gregory House had never struggled with. And regardless of how many aspects of his life had changed in recent months, he would never surrender the ability to goad and sexually harass his boss, even though the image, smell and taste of her was haunting him every moment he spent in his apartment. He limped into the lobby of Princeton Plainsboro teaching hospital, the rubber cap on the end of his cane damp from the white blanket of snow coating the ground outside, causing it to make a highly irritating high pitched squeaking noise as it made contact with the polished floor with every other step he made. In a tight fitted, suspiciously secretarial looking black skirt, complimented by a remarkably open, body hugging red shirt and a black, elasticated belt around her waist, the Dean of Medicine stood at the nurse's station with an extremely distasteful expression on her face.

"Really, must you be so loud?" As Cuddy spoke and he approached, she straightened her back, presumably in an attempt to assert her authority, and be looking up to him as little as possible, as she was a considerable distance shorter than him. Also, her last word was laboured, and quieter than the others, as if really thinking she could lead him by example – she was wonderfully optimistic.

"Yes, Dr Cuddy, I must. Really, must you be so…" He widened his eyes as they found her cleavage, and a dazed expression slipped onto his face, as if he were hypnotized into a trance. After a few seconds, he shook his head and apparently became alert and aware of reality again, though looking marginally confused. "Sorry, what was I saying?" He blinked several times in surprise.

A look of scorn replaced her look of disgust, but she merely clicked her tongue impatiently and refused to dignify his performance with a response. She thrust a navy blue file in his direction with rather more force than was really necessary. "You've got a case."

"No I don't." With the reflexes of a much younger man, he tossed the file back on top of the keyboard of the nurses' station computer, from which it very much accidentally slipped on the floor, and as she bent over to pick it up, after a fleeting glance of admiration of her ass, he limped in the direction of the elevators.

With the speed of a woman not wearing 3 and a half inch heels and the file back in her hand, she caught up with him as he hit the elevator button with his cane. "Yes, you do." She didn't even look the slightest out of breath, and she pressed the file into his chest with a significant and surprising amount of force. "You've been without a case for 10 days House, so I found you one. Well, actually, Cameron found you one."

House had no choice but to take the file that had most likely now left an imprint on his chest, considering the force with which they made contact with each other, and grimaced sarcastically. "I'll be sure to thank her in the most appropriate way. Most likely by bending her over my good knee and spanking her, I'm pretty sure she'd like that… I'll have to ask Chase." The silver elevator doors to their right opened and various members of the Princeton Plainsboro staff spilled out, along with a patient in a wheelchair, all of whom he disregarded and marched into the middle of, slamming the 3rd floor button repeatedly, presumably to board the elevator before his boss had a chance to pursue him.

Cuddy, with many polite apologies, slipped with much more ease through the crowd of people vacating the elevator and joined him inside it easily before the doors slid shut. As they did, and they were left alone, she swept her hair out of her face in an attempt to be elegant, and cleared her throat. "You know, I'm sure Cameron would like that… You just got to do it just right."

For the second time in the space of ten minutes, his eyes widened in surprise, but this time his jaw dropped in shock too. "Oh no you didn't sister. You're too anal to have slept with Cameron. You wouldn't jeopardise your working relationship with her. Besides, if you had, I'd already know." By the time he had finished speaking, rather than looking surprised, he looked self satisfied, but refrained from turning his head to the left and looking at her, as the images in his mind had no need to be any more graphic than they already were.

"By that logic, I'm too anal to ever sleep with you, either. Bad luck."

With no clever escape from being trapped in such a sticky honey trap, he knew he wasn't going to win this argument and therefore changed the subject. "Aren't you a little confused Dr. Cuddy? I'm on my way to my office to consult my highly bored team – who, might I add, have not constructed a make shift table tennis tournament out of bally, some books and a pair of your stockings I stole – on the case you have just ordered me to take, like a good little employee. That should usually result in you returning to your office, which is conveniently located in the opposite direction, and not bothering me for the rest of the day. Or until I do something insane, whatever comes first."

"I am well aware of the location of my office House, believe it or not I've got it memorised by now." The elevator doors swept open in front of them, and out of politeness she stepped back and allowed him to leave first. In reality, she just didn't want him spending the 50 yards to his office staring at her ass rather than listening to her words, but politeness and genuine concern for a cripple was a much more politically correct and admirable excuse. "In fact, I am intentionally joining you in your office. I have a few things to clear up, and make you and your team aware of in regards to the case before you begin your differential diagnosis." Her heels clicked against the hard floor as she hurried to catch him up as he pushed open the glass door and entered his outer office.

"I'm sorry, but I cannot think of anything at all about this patient that me or my team would be mildly interested in hearing before we begin the ddx. In fact, almost everything I would be remotely interested in can wait until after the ddx, which enables you to turn around and leave, and not invade the creative juices of my team." A sarcastic and very enthusiastic hand gesture accompanied the final metaphor. "Unless you're about to tell me that my patient is a blonde and insanely younger look a like of Angelina Jolie, with a better body than the woman herself, which you can tell me now and then turn around and leave." As he walked into his office, he dropped the door on his boss and tossed the file down the glass table so it skidded to a halt in front of Foreman, who was sitting at the other end glaring at House and didn't flinch.

After quickly stepping backwards to save herself from a rather embarrassing collision with the glass door, she entered the room with much more grace than her employee managed, and it was only upon her entrance that Thirteen stirred from her magazine and Taub looked up from the computer screen. However, she continued the conversation as if there was no one else in the room. "You may not be mildly interested in what I have to say, but you're still going to listen to it because as far as I can remember, I'm still your boss." Then, she turned to address the three other doctors in the room, with a well practised smile. "You've got a case. A sixteen year old female presented with intermittent blurred vision and blindness, and a hard rash on the palms of her hands. But we have a problem. The parents are also claiming she's delusional, and is experiencing neurological symptoms, because she came out as gay last month. They want assurance that none of her doctors will discuss the content of her 'sinful hallucinations' with her, they will be referred to as such, and they will be treated as every other symptom."

It was a rare moment in which House was rendered speechless, but it was hard to tell whether this was a symptom of moral outrage, or disbelief at the stupidity of some members of the human race. It was most likely the latter. To rectify the situation, he quickly recovered. "Oh so that's why you were thinking about Cameron this morning? You were considering experimenting yourself, to see if it really is 'sinful'? Well if you're going down that route, I would have thought Thirteen would be a more appropriate candidate, she's had much more experience in that field. Unless you've already had some experience yourself…"

With huge effort, Cuddy ensured that despite his speculation about her previous sexual experiences, she didn't even allow her cheeks to glow pink. She merely ignored him and turned to his team, addressing them alone. "As I'm sure, as usual, Dr. House will not be participating in any patient contact I'm predominantly speaking to you three. The parents are highly influential parishioners with a ton of money and I don't particularly want lawyers on my ass because anyone couldn't keep their mouth shut, regardless of their personal opinions. Especially Thirteen, okay?"

Remy Hadley looked highly affronted by the direct address from the Dean of Medicine, and also marginally insulted. "You think just because the parents are prejudiced idiots and I happen to inhabit the minority of which they are insulting, I'll be the one to tell their daughter to rebel and give in to her urges? Thanks, Dr. Cuddy…"

Seemingly oblivious to the exchange between his boss and his colleague, House continued to press the matter of the former's sexual experimentation. "I mean, you'd more than likely fall into the arms of a woman because you're too whiny for any man to put up with you and a woman would provide you with the tender sensitivity you so desperately need, but then would you actually have the balls to do it… Because we both know, it's a slippery slope – and once you've ventured into the jungle, you could never go back…"

Cuddy frowned so deeply in response to House's persistence that many lines appeared on her face, but she didn't even turn to look at him. "No, Dr. Hadley, what I'm saying is you shouldn't let your personal experience interfere with the case and you should ensure you keep your emotions under control because the parents are likely to say something that at the very least will offend you, if not outrage you. Now, I'll leave you to get on with the diagnosis." With that, she turned on her heel and walked out the door, without even a backwards glance at House, which everyone in the room thought was impressive.

As she left, he couldn't resist raising his voice and calling behind her, watching her ass through the glass walls of his office. "Well if you ever decide to venture down that route, be sure to let me know so I can order ring side seats!" And then he turned back to his team as if nothing had just happened. "Okay, so intermittent blindness, rash, and 'hallucinations'. Go."

"Wait a minute; you are actually considering hallucinations as a valid symptom?" Foreman raised his eyebrow sceptically, his hands clasped in front of him, having spent long enough around House to know that if he was honouring the parents' wishes, especially in a situation such as this where and extra symptom could throw their whole diagnosis off, there was a reason to be highly suspicious.

"Well mummy and daddy said so and the scary administrator said we had to keep mummy and daddy happy…" House would never be able to pull off any sort of innocence, so his effort was clearly with the intention of irony.

"But, there's clearly nothing wrong with her brain, so we're going to end up with a completely irrelevant diagnosis and she'll never get bett-"

Taub's irate sentence was cut short. "Well I know that, and you know that, but why do they need to know that? As they requested, we'll treat her delusions as we treat every other symptom – every other symptom that we know isn't really a symptom, that is. Humour and lie to the family whilst treating for what we think is actually wrong with her. It didn't take a genius to work that one out, did it? You would have thought you would have one or two brain cells in such a huge head… Or does it just look that big because of your nose?"

Thirteen cleared her throat impatiently. "Can we get back to the medicine please? As fascinating as lying to patient's families and the size of Taub's head is, we have a sick and potentially dying teenage girl which I thought was a more pressing issue… Blurred vision and a rash could be indicative of leukaemia – she's the right age too."

"Blurred vision, a rash and hallucinations." House corrected her matter-of-factly.

She tutted in annoyance and revised her statement. "Blurred vision, a rash and hallucinations could indicate leukaemia."

"No blood in the stool." Foreman shot back. "It could be lupus erythematosus?"

"She hasn't had a seizure since she got here, and if the parents think her being gay is a neurological symptom, I don't think it's likely they would miss a seizure. There's a note in the file to say she's lost weight over the last couple of months but the parents just assumed it was a typical teenage thing – worrying about body image – but what if it's a symptom? Loss of appetite could suggest sarcoidosis." Taub seemed as though he was determined to prove there was more than one or two brain cells in his head.

Highly unimpressed by this stroke of inspiration, House merely addressed the rest of the team. "No objection to sarcoidosis? Okay then get our little teenage drama queen a CT scan, and draw some blood to check her liver and kidneys. If that doesn't tell us anything, get consent to stick a needle in her eye and get a biopsy."


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks so much for all the reviews guys! I'm not really sure how often I should be updating seen as I have the first 11 and a bit chapters already written... But I'm really glad you all like it anyhow! Also, for me, if you like this fic then pop over and take a look at partypantscuddy 's fics, specifically Beauty and the Tragedy, her new fic, and After the Bombs, which is wonderful and she's just an all round wonderful writer and wonderful person! I love hearing all your comments, so please leave a review! xxxx**

**Ps. It may not seem like it, but this is a House/Cuddy fic, I promise! Just, give it time... XD**

**Pps. This is for partypantscuddy because I really think she needs it more than anyone tonight 3**

**II**

"Lucas… Do you think I'm a coward?"

"What? Where has that come from?"

Cuddy leant back further in her office chair, slid each court shoe off with the opposite foot and let them tumble to the carpeted floor, before lifting her stocking covered feet to perch on the corner of her desk, right next to her outbox. She held the office phone to her ear with her left hand, playing absent-mindedly with the spiralled cord with her free fingers, and in her right hand she held a canteen standard white plastic fork which was chasing a piece of lettuce drenched in salad dressing around a transparent plastic pot. "Nowhere…" she lied, without a second thought. "I just… Do you think I'm too…? Do you think I play it too safe? I don't take enough chances?"

Her boyfriend's voice alone was comforting and that in itself was helping to wash away the seeds of doubt that House always managed to plant in her mind when she sat down alone and over analysed everything he'd ever said to her. "You took a pretty big chance on me, didn't you? But seriously, what did House say to make you think that?"

She was almost embarrassed that he knew her well enough to know basically the only person who would ever get to her, and she was highly embarrassed by the fact that his words actually did get to her. "Oh, nothing… Nothing important…" She answered distractedly, her voice a little muffled as she stuffed a whole cherry tomato into her mouth.

"Come on Lisa, you don't fool me. He's said something to wind you up and you've spent the last few hours wondering whether he was right, so you called me for a secret little confidence boost and to hear me say that he doesn't know what he's talking about." She could almost hear him grinning with satisfaction from the other end of the phone line because he knew he was right. "For being so annoyingly right about you, surely that warrants you telling me what's upsetting you?"

She sighed and caved reluctantly. "He was insinuating I'd be more suited to date women than men… Which in itself doesn't bother me, because that's just House being House, but then he added that actually, even if I wanted a woman, I'd never go for it because I'd be too scared. I wouldn't take the risk…"

There was a moment of silence.

"Lucas?"

"_Have_ you ever been with a woman?"

She sighed, but was marginally amused. "You're as bad as him Lucas. You're supposed to be making me feel better…"

"Okay, okay I'm sorry. There's a time and a place for that question and this isn't it. You take a lot of risks… You sometimes don't get up as soon as your alarm goes off in the morning; sometimes you call in sick so you can spend all day in your pyjamas..."

"Lucas!"

"Sorry. Lisa, you do take risks. But what's even better than that is you've taken so many risks and so many well judged risks in the past that now you've made a life for yourself that's so stable that you no longer have to take risks as often as you did. But when the situation calls for it… You took a risk on Rachel, on us… And look how they turned out for you."

Cuddy couldn't help but break out in a smile. "You know sometimes, and right now is one of those times, you remind me why I'm actually dating you." She had that warm, wriggling feeling in her stomach that luckily had nothing to do with the food she was eating and felt content. It was a feeling she was encountering more frequently lately than she had in a very long time, and she was almost getting used to it.

* * *

><p>It was almost like a bizarre therapy scene from a straight to disk movie. James Wilson sat behind his desk with a pen in his hand regardless of the fact that he hadn't actually written anything down in the past fifteen minutes and Gregory House lay back on his sofa, eyes closed with the intent of relaxing if not actually sleeping.<p>

"Do you think she's _actually _ever tried the gay thing…?"

Wilson threw his pen down in exasperation and ran his hand through his hair, making sure that he didn't let on that the thought had distracted him ever so slightly. "I don't know, House, and frankly, I don't really care all that much, and I certainly don't care enough to spend the next half an hour speculating about whether she has or not because neither of us have the slightest clue so nothing we say will bring us any closer to the actual answer to that question."

House's eyes snapped open in apparent shock. "You don't care? You are a disgrace to the male gender Wilson – every man should care if the Dean of Medicine has had any girl on girl action in amongst her many sexual encounters." He furrowed his brow and examined his best friend for a second before breaking out in a grin. "Besides, you were lying, you can't stop thinking about it now, which means there must be another reason you don't want to talk about it… Because you think it's degrading and disrespectful… Which you'd only care about if you thought she'd find out that you were degrading and disrespectful… And we're the only people in this room and I'm not going to tell her, so the only way she'd find out is if you told her… So that means you planned to spend enough time with her for it to come up in casual conversation… You want to jump her!"

"No I don't! House, will you please stop assuming that the moment I appear to have any respect or care for her?" Wilson dropped his head into his hands and sighed so deeply it was as if he was taking his final breath. "You know why I don't want to talk about it? Because I'm bored of talking about Cuddy. Well, no, I'm not, but the fact is, if I sit here and listen to your elaborate theories and fantasies about her, I'm enabling you ignoring your feelings for her and letting out your frustration by coming to my office to talk about her. So I'm withholding the privilege until you at least do something proactive about your feelings for her." He held up his hand as a motion of silence, then attempted to return to the mountains of files on his desk, but had only poised pen above paper before House started talking again.

"So your theory is that if you don't sit and talk to me about her, then I'll get so frustrated that I can't talk about her that I'll go and talk to her instead?" House feigned pondering on this theory and then deciding it was ludicrous. "Let's see how that one works out for you."

Knowing that continuing to argue with him was only continuing to enable him, Wilson attempted to ignore House's presence in his office.

"Well that's mature." House lifted his cane and poked Wilson hard in the right shoulder with it, intentionally when he had pen to paper, causing a huge scribble over the whole page. "Oops. Did you make a mistake?"

"Well that's mature." Dropping his pen onto his desk, Wilson sighed and gave up. "Fine, House. But you have to talk to her. Or do something. And not your usual excuse of doing something – thinking up some elaborate plan to make her angry, or testing her coffee cup for hormones, or anything like that. Actually something proactive. Because I can't stand much longer of you coming to my office and moaning about her, or fantasizing about her." This was a conversation they'd had before, and last time it didn't exactly go as planned so he knew was dangerous territory. He also never knew how seriously to take House, or how seriously House was taking him.

Pushing himself up from the sofa with his cane, House limped towards the door, before nodding at his best friend. "Okay cupid, you tell yourself I'm going to do that, and I'll pretend to do that and instead go and sit in my office and wait for my team to come and tell me my patient is cured and we can all go home. That'll keep us both happy." And he limped out of the door without another word.

* * *

><p>"You have to go and talk to him!"<p>

"Wilson, no I don't. There's nothing to talk about. He had a drug induced hallucination about having sex with me – something which he does when he's off drugs anyway – and now he's clean. And I'm his boss. And everything is back to normal. We have absolutely nothing to talk about and I have absolutely nothing to say to him." Cuddy leant back against her desk, holding herself up with her hands, frowning at Wilson who was standing by the door of her office.

"He hallucinated having sex with you, you wear low cut tops and spend all day ordering him around because you know that's what he likes. The only difference is, he's a lot more upfront about it, and finally is no longer in denial!"

Scowling and turning her back on him, Cuddy went back to sitting behind her desk. "I order him around because it's my job, and someone has to, because you certainly don't keep him under control. You enable him, just like you're doing now by playing matchmaker! He needs to move on with his life, and making him believe his fantasy in which I was his saviour and we lived happily ever after could come true is only keeping him stuck in the past. He never should have gone back to living in that apartment alone, or come back to work so quickly. He's supposed to be moving forward Wilson."

Wilson shook his head in disbelief, determined not to drop it, especially when she was so blatantly changing the subject, so she clearly had something to hide. "Don't try and make this about his recovery Lisa. This was coming way before the drugs screwed him up, way before Kutner, and Amber. Regardless of what should have happened when he first came out of Mayfield, it's too late. And he's fine so far. But you're right, he does need to move forward, and the only way he can reach the next stage of his life is if the woman he's spent years coveting is prepared to give him a chance and believe he's changed!"

"Now you're making this about his recovery. Don't try and blackmail me by telling me it's the only way for him to get better – do you really think that is the foundations for a good relationship? He needs to move on… I have." The words stuck in her throat for some reason, possibly the same reason she felt a sudden involuntary urge to not answer when Lucas first asked her on a date. It was something that had bubbled under the surface for years, never quite rising up. And it felt like now she'd buried it forever, banished it to the land of no return, and she felt a sense of loss, and fear.

He blinked in shock. "You've moved on?"

"I had to."

"I don't believe you. Feelings like that don't just disappear Lisa. Not even if you want them to – usually even less so if you want them to. Just give him a chance…"

She wasn't quite sure why she wasn't telling Wilson the real reason she couldn't give her and House a go. If she needed to, her brain within seconds could give her a million extremely logical reasons, excuses she could use to placate him and get him to drop the subject. But the fact was, even though every single one would be valid, not one would be true. She didn't know why she wasn't telling him about Lucas – all she knew is she wasn't quite ready yet, but she was telling herself she was keeping it a secret because House wasn't ready yet. As narcissistic as it seemed to her, she was scared what the news that she was dating one of the only people House had ever been able to socially spend time with would do to him. But most of all, it would make it real. From that moment, there would be no going back. There would be no chance of there ever being a 'them' – she would have moved on for good. And she wasn't quite sure she could kill that possibility quite yet. So in some ways Wilson was right, she hadn't moved on. "Believe what you like, but I can't. I've started a new chapter of my life, as he has of his. I have Rachel now; I have responsibilities to more than just myself. And I can't put her stable environment at risk for a lust filled fling that we both know would never work out anyway. I'm sorry."

There was a momentary silence before he shrugged his shoulders and turned to the door. He grabbed the door handle, but before leaving, he turned back to her. "You'll regret it, you know. As will he. But you're both too stubborn to admit what you want and by the time you do… It might be too late." Without waiting for a reply, Wilson left his boss' office.

As she heard the latch click on the outer office door and she watched him leave the clinic, Cuddy let out a sigh. What made it harder was knowing Wilson was right, she would regret it. Probably for the rest of her life. But right now, that didn't make it worth it. Lucas was the safe bet – he was good with Rachel, he was always home when she needed him there and he didn't hate the world. But she couldn't get rid of the nagging the nagging feeling at the back of her mind – he wasn't House.


	3. Chapter 3

**Yaaaay, thank you so much for reading and reviewing guys. I really really appreciate it! Thanks Alex, I think I'm going to keep on posting everything 3/4 days... I say that now, but when I run out of pre-written stuff, it may take a little bit longer! And JessicaClackum, yeah, it is just his imagination! The only time they've actually slept together is in college, so it's just like the show, yeah! :) **

**As for this chapter, this is when the story really begins to start, so I really hope you like it! Please, leave me a review, they never fail to make me smile! xxxx**

**III**

"It's not sarcoidosis. The tests were negative and she now has chest pain. Taub listened to her chest. She's got pericarditis." House's team filed in to his office where he was watching his favourite soap on his wall mounted TV. Thirteen stepped forward to hand him the file.

House, who hadn't turned away from the TV, didn't even notice. "How do you know?"

"He heard friction rub."

Only then did House finally turn to look at his team. "Let the man speak for himself, Foreman! Just because he's short, doesn't mean he needs help defending himself! How do we know he didn't screw up? This girl was apparently healthy – just a few problems seeing straight and she was a little bit itchy, now he's saying she has a heart problem?"

Taub chipped in, audibly annoyed. "I didn't screw up, it was there. Pericarditis puts lupus back on the table."

"And you cleverly dismissed that earlier because she hadn't had any seizures, has that changed? No, I didn't think so. So think up a new idea of your own instead of reusing his old one that you already dumped on, genius."

"Drugs." Thirteen, having been deep in thought and not listened to a work of House's jibes, spoke suddenly. "Some prescription drugs have side effects of blurred vision, rash and pericarditis. Methotrexate does…"

"You think the parents forgot to tell us she has cancer?" He ridiculed such an idea as if it were completely absurd. "She's not on methotrexate. What else could have caused this?"

Foreman's chest swelled in that characteristic way it always did when he had something to say. "It has to be some sort of auto immune disease – it's not just hitting the heart."

"It has to be some sort of auto immune disease? Great, thanks for that invaluable piece of insight Foreman. Now, go and find out which one – I'm going home." House pushed himself precariously up from his chair grabbed his leather motorbike jacket and slipped it on as he limped for the door.

"Find out which one? Testing for every auto immune disease will take all night!" Foreman turned and crossed his arms on his chest, looking defiantly at his boss.

Reaching the door, and finally getting his jacket on properly, House nodded. "That's what I said. Take it in shifts. Goodnight!" There was an outbreak of angry muttering from Taub as House left the room which he chose to pretend he just didn't hear.

* * *

><p>It was hard enough for him to sleep as it was these days, without the added distractions of his inconsiderate and seemingly nocturnal neighbours slamming doors and screaming at one another at every unnatural hour. So when he heard a systematic and relentless knocking again that night, he made a grunt of annoyance in his state of semi consciousness, stuck a pillow over his head and tried to fall back into a slumber. Besides, his leg always pained him more at night, and without the vicodin, the only solace he'd found was the only way he could cope – sleeping through the worst hours. However, it took him a while to realise that this time, the noise wasn't actually Mr and Mrs Downstairs, but someone knocking on his own apartment door, getting steadily louder and more irate the longer he ignored it. Cursing whoever was coming calling and disturbing his beauty sleep, he dragged himself out of bed, clinging hard onto his right leg to offer himself as much support as he could without the help of his cane. It took him a while to reach the door, and by the time he got there, the person on the other side was almost battering it down. He flicked the lock, grabbed the door handle and wrenched it open. "Can't a guy get some sleep around here?"<p>

Ignoring his more than unwelcoming manner, Cuddy pushed past him into his apartment, flicking the light on and turning to look at him. "Get dressed; you're coming back to work. Your patient has aortic insufficiency, with a dramatically decreased ejection fraction. She could die."

House blinked rapidly and held one hand up to his eyes in order to shield them from the light that he was shrinking away from, almost like a vampire. He squinted in the direction of his boss and frowned. "If she has an acute aortic insufficiency – I assume it's acute or you wouldn't be desperate enough to be here – then she needs surgery, as soon as possible. Or she will die. But I am not a surgeon; therefore this is not my concern. It will only be my concern in the morning when I come to explain why it happened, _after _the surgeon's have fixed it. So if you would be kind enough to go and stress in your own house, or your office, or anywhere that isn't here, that would be much appreciated, thank you. Shut the door on your way out." He gestured to the front door and began to limp painfully back to his bedroom.

"House! Stop, this girl needs you. She's in a huge amount of pain and is very close to death. Could you actually show some compassion and not only care about yourself for once in your miserable life?" She was as surprised as he was to here herself close to tears, and the depth of the desperation in her voice.

At that, he turned around and limped back towards her, with each step the evident pain flashing across his dark, handsome features. "What I want to know, is why you care about her so much. I mean, I know you can't help yourself, especially when it's a young girl that you can mother and care for and compare to yourself when you were that age. But I've never seen you this attached since, well, Rachel's mother… So why this one?"

His words stung a little, but she didn't know why because she knew what he said was biologically true. But to her, she was Rachel's mother, always had been and always will be, because she was the only mother the little girl had ever and would ever know. Besides, that was an argument for another day. "House, don't play mind games, this isn't some intriguing, unfathomable mystery for you to solve. This is a dying teenage girl, and surprisingly, I don't want her to die, I want you to help her. Because it looks like, right now, you're the only person who can."

But it was almost like she hadn't spoken at all. "That takes us back to the theory that you sympathise with her because of her battle with sexuality, but you weren't that much older than her when we met, and you certainly weren't confused then… So that must mean you had a defining moment in your sexuality between sixteen and eighteen…"

"Get dressed and get back to work or you're fired." She didn't raise her voice, shout, or scream. But her look could have sliced steel and her tone would have sent most men and women running scared. She wasn't quite sure why she was so angry with him, but part of her knew this wasn't just about the patient anymore. "I mean it." All the anger and frustration and confusion she felt, the emotions that had been exacerbated by her conversation with Wilson that afternoon, were coursing through her body. She wanted to be angry at him, she wanted to hate him, because he was giving her a million reasons to do so and it would make everything so much easier. But what infuriated her even more was even when he was being a self absorbed selfish bastard, she couldn't hate him.

House could see the cogs working in her brain, and he had to know what was going on inside her head. She was nothing if not enthralling, and he saw the perfect opportunity to goad her. "I'm sure you do mean it. What is it Cuddy, why are you being so cold with me? Why are you so angry?" As he spoke he moved closer to her, studying her intently, watching and examining her every move whilst taking in her scent.

Panic was starting to bubble inside her, but again she was uncertain why. Cuddy was desperately trying to keep her voice calm and steady but she wasn't quite sure she managed to pull it off. "This isn't about me, or you. This is about someone who has put their life in our hands and trusted in us because we are doctors and that's what people do. They trust us to do whatever it takes to save their lives. And if you aren't prepared to do that, if you won't save somebody's life because it encroaches on your beauty sleep, then maybe you shouldn't be a doctor anymore." And with that, she turned to leave, but felt him grab on to her forearm in an attempt to stop her.

"Wilson spoke to you, didn't he?" And suddenly, it all made sense. He didn't realise how he hadn't seen it earlier. Using the slightly firm grip he had on her wrist, he turned her round to face him and took another step towards her. "He told you we should talk, didn't he? He said there was things that needed to be said, things that needed to be tried… And the only reason you would freak out like this instead of telling him to toss off was if you thought there was a possibility that he might be right…" He again moved closer to her, their faces so close now that he could count the freckles on hers. Also, his voice was softer. Less taunting, and much less aggressive. This was almost uncharted territory for him – sensitivity wasn't a trait he possessed in abundance, if he possessed it at all. "I'm right, aren't I…?"

The last time they had been this close, he had shattered every illusion she may have ever had of any sort of relationship between them other than a professional one being a success, by thinking the appropriate and gentlemanly progression from a kiss was to grab her breast. She almost too scared to breathe, and most definitely too scared to open her mouth to answer him – but regardless, she was sure the question had been rhetorical because he knew the answer anyway. All she could do was look at him, and as she inhaled the scent of him lingered in her nose, mixed with something else. Danger. But before she had a chance to think any further, he was so close that she could count his individual eyelashes.

And then he kissed her. He didn't know what made him do it but it was a compulsion that he couldn't control. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and the excitement and lust of the moment was mingled with a comforting familiarity that made his heart race even more. It was just as good as he remembered, from his imagination – even better now the drugs weren't clouding his senses.

She was taken by surprise, but his arms almost felt like home. It was an action that had always felt so natural between them both, which perhaps explained why even after twenty years, it still happened. Her heart was pumping so fast she was scared it might explode, and as she moved her hands up and down his back she could feel a warmth that spread to the ends of her fingers and the tips of her toes. She felt the pent up emotion flow out of her as she forgot everything else in the world.

It was seconds, minutes even before they broke apart. And even when they did, there was electricity flying around the room with every look, every breath, every glance.

It took her a moment to realise exactly what she'd done. She thought of her daughter, at home, asleep, completely innocent. She thought of Lucas, probably dozing on top of his own covers, fully dressed and exhausted, completely oblivious. And the power of what she had just felt scared her. She looked into House's eyes with fear and tried to condemn the urge to be sick. "I'm sorry, I have to go." And with that, she rushed to the door, and left without a word.

* * *

><p>Had the roads not been as deserted as they generally were at 3am, Cuddy probably would have never made it home. Her sight was blurred for the whole journey by the streams of salty, burning tears that wouldn't seem to stop. She didn't go back to the hospital – she couldn't. Instead, she let herself back in the house as quietly as she could so as not to wake Rachel, or the nanny, slipped out of her clothes and into her silk night dress. But when she climbed under the covers, she didn't sleep – she couldn't even contemplate it. She felt a weight of guilt and disgust in herself beyond anything she had ever felt before. Infidelity was something she'd always regarded with the utmost contempt, but as she lay in the blanket of darkness, silently crying into her pillow, she asked herself if she'd just committed it. It was just a kiss, nothing but a kiss, it didn't mean anything. But that was what scared her. It did mean something, as everything between them always did, from the moment they laid eyes on one another in the campus bookstore. Her whole body shook as she sobbed harder, stifling her cries as best she could. Even though less than an hour ago she'd felt closer to a man than she had done in longer than she cared to remember; now she felt more alone than she ever had done. She rolled over on to her back and attempted to dry her eyes, before sitting up and reaching to her bedside cabinet for her mobile phone. Flicking through her contacts, she called Lucas.<p>

His voice was drowsy and his words almost indistinguishable. "Lisa, it's almost 4 o'clock in the morning…"

Hoping she'd successfully rid her tone of any telltale signs that she'd been crying, she cleared her throat and spoke softly, apologetically. "I know, I'm sorry. I just… Would you mind coming over? I can't sleep." The words were easy, much easier than she expected them to be.

"Oh, right, okay… I won't be long baby." And he ended the call without waiting to hear any words in return.

She slid back under the duvet and laid her phone back on the bedside table, running the conversation through her head over and over. When she left House's apartment, there had been no question or doubt in her mind what she had to do next. Tell Lucas, tell him she was sorry, tell him it meant nothing and hope he understood enough not to hate her for it. But then she wondered, and she hated herself for wondering, if she really needed to tell him at all. All it would cause was pain and suffering, and for something that supposedly meant nothing, was it really worth it? As she closed her eyes, the darkness swallowed her up again but sleep was no closer. Her mind was filled with fear, confusion, self doubt and self hatred, causing her to toss and turn as if she was attempting to fight off her daemons with her hands. It was tormenting her, and she knew her time was running out.

There was the sound of wood against carpet and a crack of light slipped into her room as the door opened a fraction. Her boyfriend stayed silent as he closed the door behind him and crept in bare feet towards her bed, not knowing if she was awake or had succumbed to fatigue. But as he approached her, he saw her eyes flicker open slightly and he sat down on the bed beside her. "I'm sorry, I didn't know if you'd managed to sleep yet, so I didn't want to wake you by knocking on the door, I just used my key. I hope you don't mind."

Smelling his smell, she pulled him closer to her, because he made her feel safe. The panic in the pit of her stomach was subsiding with every word he spoke and she even managed a small and grateful smile to him, even though she was afraid it looked more like a grimace. "Of course not, thank you. I'm sorry too, for waking you up at such a stupid time, making you come out here…" She trailed off, not wanting to think any further into that sentence.

"Oh, sssssh, don't worry about it, it's okay…" Gently he swung his legs onto the bed beside her and, still fully clothed and laying on top of the quilt, he put his arms around her gently. "What is it, what's wrong? What happened…?"

Only then did she feel like there was an obstruction in her throat. She couldn't speak, she could lie out right to him, he didn't deserve it. Not that he deserved to be lied to by omission either, but that was easier on the conscience. She merely looked at him, with fearful, and apologetic eyes before resting her head on his chest and feeling protected and comforted. As she sank into the warmth and calming feeling his presence brought, she couldn't help feeling that she didn't deserve this.


	4. Chapter 4

** Hey guys, ok I'm giving you another update before I go away for a couple of days - I'm going down to London for my girlfriend's interview for Reading University! I'm really glad you all liked the last chapter, and I'm honestly so happy that you're all reading this, and thank you so much for your reviews! I'm sorry, but you are going to have to put up with Lucas for a little while longer, but he does really play a central role in the plot... And hopefully you'll all forgive me for it as time goes on.**

**Anyway, please please pretty please leave me reviews for when I come back - the only internet access I'll have when I'm away is from my phone so I may be able to check out your reviews, but I also might not! And when I come back, I'll finally be getting round to writing more of the story, so I can still update at a steady pace. I'll see you all when I'm back on Friday, and, enjoy! xxxxxx**

**IV**

When Wilson walked into his best friend's office, he found House apparently hanging upside down from his computer chair, his head barely centimetres from the floor and his face turning a slightly concerning shade of puce. It was just before noon the next day and Wilson immediately forget why he'd entered the room out of pure shock of the sight that greeted him. "You… It… What are you doing?" He spluttered, exasperated by the sheer idiocy of what he saw.

"I read on the internet somewhere that a Japanese scientist has proposed by hanging upside down and allowing gravity to aid the pumping of blood to our brains, we can grow brain cells twice as fast as usual. So I'm proving, or disproving, his theory." His voice was audibly strained by the pressure the blood was exerting on his head, but he spoke as if it was the most normal thing in the world to be doing.

Wilson's jaw dropped and he just gaped for a second, before shaking his head in disbelief and deciding not to argue, instead taking a seat in front of House's desk. "You paged me?"

Deciding it wasn't going to be practical to conduct a whole conversation upside down, due to the fact that he couldn't really open his mouth much more without the over whelming urge to throw up, or the possibility of passing out, House carefully, but with the grace of a professional gymnast half his age and female, spun himself upright to face Wilson and shook his head ever so slighty, as if to dislodge any excess blood in his head and begin it flowing properly again. "Yes, I paged you. I paged you to tell you next time you have one of your little match making plans, keep it to yourself please."

"You talked to her?" Wilson's jaw dropped again, wondering if the hanging upside down had done something mind altering, or personality altering, to his friend. "How did it go, what did she say?" He leaned forward almost like a small school boy waiting to hear the gossip from a friend's first date.

"No, I didn't talk to her. Well, I did, only after she talked to me, without really saying anything… The point is, you talked to her!" House waved an accusing finger in Wilson's face.

He sighed, completely exasperated. "Yes, I talked to her, because someone needed to talk to her and you clearly weren't going to! But, wait a minute, what do you mean you only talked to her after she talked to you but she didn't talk to you…" Wilson raised his eyebrow, thoroughly confused.

"She came to my house last night about a patient, and she was being really over emotional about the patient yet completely cold with me. She threatened to fire me then I tried to work out what was going on in her head, then I realised you'd talked to her and convinced her that you, for once in your life, actually knew what you were talking about and were worth listening to." House explained, all completely carelessly, as if reeling off a well rehearsed speech that was of no interest to him when he knew his audience was trying desperately trying to catch every word he said.

He stayed silent at this point, expecting the explanation to continue. When it didn't, he spoke. "And… Is that it? Then what happened?"

And as it wasn't the most important part of the story but in fact something completely irrelevant, he added. "Oh, and then we kissed, and she ran off crying. I didn't think I was that bad at kissing…" House looked incredulously at Wilson, almost with the attempted innocence of that small boy spilling the gossip of his first date.

"You kissed? House, that's huge! That's a step in the right direction! Now, we've just got to make sure it doesn't reduce her to tears next time it happens…" And with that Wilson trailed off, apparently pondering on how they could achieve this goal.

"Next time? There isn't going to be a next time, that is the last time I listen to you and your crazy theories. Now she's going to be all weird with me and I'm going to be all weird with her and it's going to be all messed up and I don't even get to see her naked for my trouble, so thank you very much."

"Oh, no, come on, you can't give up now!"

There was a note of finality and defiance in House's voice when he spoke. "Yes, I can." And then he looked up to the glass door to his office and saw a female in a figure hugging suit and killer patent leather red heels walking towards it. Without a warning he ducked under his desk just in time for his boss to walk through the door and give Wilson a withering look.

Wilson almost jumped backwards, looking extremely taken aback. "Me, what did I do?"

If looks could kill, Cuddy made sure he was dead four times over as she stalked into the room. "You couldn't stop yourself interfering, that's what." And then she turned and apparently addressed House's desk. "As stupid as you may think I am, House, I know where you are. And even though hiding behind a desk after kissing me reflects your level of emotional maturity, it would be appreciated if you could attempt to be professional instead of acting like a child."

House peeked over the top of his desk as if he was scared of his boss, but then with difficulty got back into his chair and faced her with feigned politeness. "If professional is what you want Dr. Cuddy, professional is what you will get."

"I just wanted to say that whatever may have happened last night, you seem to have a habit of catching me at vulnerable times, and old habits die hard apparently. So you should just forget it happened and we won't speak of it. Consider it one of those rare emotional connections you manage to make at odd times." She looked almost awkward, but spoke in a very matter of fact and proficient way. "And I also wanted to check on your patient, with the AI, and to make sure you'd actually begun looking for the cause, since I asked you to last night and you refused."

"You mean, you asked me to just before we kissed?"

She glared, clearly unimpressed. "Yes."

"Oh right, then, yes, well I just had to clarify, you know…" Her eyes flashing warningly were enough to even make him shut up and actually answer her question. "I'm waiting for my team to come back and tell me why her heart started leaking, and then we'll be on it like stink on cheese. Happy?"

"Ecstatic." She answered sarcastically as she walked towards the door of his office. "Let me know when you decide on a diagnosis and what the prognosis is. And you," she added, indicating Wilson, "instead of causing trouble, keep an eye on him and actually try and keep him under control rather than enabling him. Mummy has things to do and can't babysit both of you every minute of every day, but you're only marginally more responsible than him at the moment." And with that she left his office, the door swinging behind her.

Wilson turned back around in his chair from staring in shock and wonder at the door to staring in shock and wonder at House. "Wow… She's… Wow. She's mad. We're dead."

"I told you talking to her was a stupid idea."

* * *

><p>"If Mohammed will not come to the mountain… The mountain must go to Mohammed." House entered the microbiology lab and held his arms out to his fellows. "So the mountain has come. I have been waiting all morning for one if not all of you to appear with the answer to our patient's aortic insufficiency, and not one of you has come. So to get the incredibly vast ass of the Administrator off my poor little ass that she spanked red raw this morning, I decided to come and find out what the hell happened last night, seen as you three seem to be incapable of doing so."<p>

Foreman withdrew his nose from down a microscope, and ignored his boss' arrogance. "I was right, it is auto immune. She has Reiter's Syndrome."

"So it's taken you almost 24 hours and the patient's heart springing a leak for you to tell me that two plus two does actually equal four. Well done, and I you've really proved that all those years at medical school were worth their while!"

Thirteen immediately got defensive of her boyfriend. "This is the first chance we've had to do any testing since we decided it was auto immune, her condition declined and then she had the AI so we prioritised and were slightly preoccupied by the task of not letting her die in the meantime…"

"Don't worry, I'm sure your boyfriend can defend himself, he's worked with me long enough o have the time to learn so you don't need to earn yourself sexual favours from him." And before either Thirteen or Foreman could open their mouths to argue with him, he rushed on to talk about the patient. "So as Foreman cleverly deduced, she has Reiter's Syndrome. So we put her on steroids for the auto immune until we find out which infection caused the reaction. We can rule out the usual chlamydia on the grounds that, whatever her parents wish to believe, she is gay."

Possibly just for arguments sake, Taub interrupted. "Are you saying gay people don't have sex?"

"No, of course not!" House answered in a voice that was seemingly supposed to sound hurt at the suggestion of him being so prejudiced. "We know that's not true, anyway, just ask Foreman… Because Thirteen would lie – it's her duty to all fellow lesbians to keep every heterosexual man's dream alive."

"I'm not gay." Stated Thirteen, almost bored of this repeated argument about her sexuality.

"I'll believe that when your boyfriend tells me so." And House gave her a very over exaggerated wink.

Getting impatient, Taub pressed on with his point. "What I'm saying is, why are we ruling out chlamydia just because she's gay? She could still have it."

"Okay, fine, if it'll stop your whining go and test for chlamydia. And you can buy me a dry Reuben, hold the pickles, when you're wrong." When he didn't move, House pointed towards the door. "Go on, now, go and get the sample, go! The test won't run itself!" Once he had left the room, visibly disgruntled, House turned back to Thirteen and Foreman.

Both his remaining fellows took this as a cue to continue the ddx. "It's usually salmonella or shigella, if it's not chlamydia. At least some form of food poisoning or gastroenteritis… We should test her for all of those."

House nodded before turning to the door himself. "Come and find me when you've got the results."

* * *

><p>She was doing everything she possibly could to stop herself thinking, because every time she stopped to think, the pit of guilt in her stomach bubbled up and made her feel extremely nauseous. She was almost, for the first time, willing House to do something completely crazy or insane, to take her mind off her own sins. But instead she was in her office, alone, reading through copious applications from ophthalmology for a promotion to head of department when the current one retired. It wasn't exactly enthralling work, so her mind kept wandering and her head wasn't a good place to be right now. It was a huge relief when she heard her office door swing open, but she didn't even look up from the paperwork in front of her. "No, you can't give her total body irradiation because you can't find the infection that's causing her auto immune disease. Just because you haven't found it, doesn't mean it isn't there. So keep looking."<p>

"I haven't got the faintest idea what any of that means, but I love that my girlfriend is so intelligent, it's really sexy…" Lucas gently let the office door close behind him and tilted the blinds slightly that hung over it.

"Oh, sorry, I wasn't expecting you, I was expecting House…" Cuddy was surprised to hear her boyfriend's voice and even though every minute she spent with him at the moment whilst she was still sick with guilt was torture, there was still something distinctly calming about his voice and his presence, just like there had been the night before. She looked up and smiled softly at him. "What are you doing here?"

Dropping into one of the seats in front of her desk, he smiled back at her. "Well, I hate to think of you all alone at work, cooped up in your office half the time doing paperwork and the other half of the time cleaning up House's messes, so I decided to come and visit you." But he had a slightly cheeky grin on his face that regardless of how terrible she felt, it was contagious.

"Is that all?" She raised her eyebrow questioningly, but she was resisting the urge to laugh.

He got up and walked round the desk towards her, smiling mischievously. "Maybe… Or it could have had a little bit to do with the fact that I couldn't wait until you got home to kiss you…" And then he lifted her chin and placed a kiss on her lips.

Pulling away quickly but reluctantly, still giggling, she pushed him away and back towards the seats. "Lucas, I'm at work, someone might see!"

"I swear you're ashamed of me… So what if anyone sees?"

She reached over the desk and smacked him playfully with a patient file. "I am not ashamed of you! I just… Well, I don't publicise my personal life, but apart from that, I don't think House is quite ready to know I've moved on yet, and I don't want to send him back to the beginning and undo all the good work that rehab did… You know that."

"It's a good job I believe you, isn't it?" He pulled a face at her and but then continued talking, and she immediately realised this was something he'd been waiting to tell her since he came in and was the real reason why he'd come to see her at work. "I've got a surprise for you when you get home tonight."

At this, Cuddy had to contain her desire to grin like an excited school child and instead gave him a composed and apprehensive but intrigued smile. "A surprise, oh really? Are you going to enlighten me any more than that?"

Lucas got up from his chair and indicated to the door to show he was going to leave. "Nope, you'll have to be patient, but I think it'll be worth the wait. But I will tell you one thing."

"Oh really, what's that?" She smiled, surveying him with interest and approval and letting her mind wander to all the things he could have planned for her.

It was almost as if he could read her mind and knew exactly what she was thinking. "It doesn't involve repaying sexual favours – well, it might do, just not directly." He grinned, smirking slightly.

It was her turn to pull a face at him this time, although she pouted, as if she was disappointed then picked upon of Rachel's soft toys that was left on her desk from the last time her daughter visited her at work and threw it at him as he left the room.


	5. Chapter 5

******Hey guys, I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to update, after being in London I was completely wiped out Friday and yesterday. Thank you so much for all the reviews guys, I'm really glad you're liking the story, even with all the Luddy at the moment.**

**I'm also so pleased you think that it's in character - that was one of my main aims when writing at such a fast pace in such a short space of time. And Jessica, great guess, but hopefully all will be revealed in this chapter!**

**I apologise for distinct lack of Huddy interaction in this part but believe me, it is necessary for the story!**

**Enjoy, and please read and review, and also don't be afraid to give me any constructive criticism too! xxxxx**

**V**

"It's not a gastrointestinal bacteria, or if it is, it's hiding somewhere other than her intestines." Thirteen's voice echoed around the morgue as House's three fellows filed into the room with their latest update to find him lying on a coroner's table with his portable TV in his left hand and a Reuben sandwich in the other, his cane lying by his side.

Without looking away from the tiny screen in front of him that he was staring intently at, he answered. "And I take it from the fact that Taub has now rejoined you both, she tested negative for chlamydia? I can only assume he didn't come back and tell me because he didn't want to buy me a Reuben, so I bought my own. Well, technically Wilson bought it for me but..."

"Yes, she did." Taub sounded extremely irate when he cut in, similar to how he usually did when he was proved wrong, although slightly quieter as he was very aware of where they were.

"So if the infection isn't from her yummy parts or her fun parts, where is it? What other infections can cause Reiter's Syndrome?" There was a loud and unexpected crunch that broke the steely and solemn silence that generally resided in a morgue as he took another bite into his Reuben and the bread crumbled.

Foreman shrugged but was waiting for the out break of ridicule that was bound to come when he answered the question. "Nothing else causes reactive arthritis. It has to be chlamydia or food poisoning."

Only then did House look away from his TV show, to give his longest serving employee a look that plainly asked if he were stupid. "Dr. Foreman, I thought we just established that it was neither of those things?"

"But it has to be, there's no other explanation!" He replied, completely exasperated.

"Unless you screwed up the tests." House took another bite of his sandwich and his eyes widened as a tall, busty blonde walked on to the small screen and he held it up to his face. "Wow, she's new…"

Thirteen once again came to the rescue of her boyfriend, but this time out of pity, not out of nobility or chivalry. "We didn't screw up the tests. When they call came back negative and we knew Taub's had too, we redid them, twice. No screw up. She has no infection in her intestine."

Her boyfriend shot her a furious look, humiliated to have been saved by his girlfriend twice in one day in front of another colleague and his boss, but luckily for both of them House was too busy concentrating on the eyeful he was receiving elsewhere to notice their exchange.

"Then Taub screwed up his test, which I agree is a much more likely conclusion but I didn't want to accuse him first because I didn't want him to know I assumed it was him all along, because you two are much better doctors."

Trying not to rise to the bait because he knew it would only make things worse, Taub tried to keep his voiced steady and unchanged. "I did not screw up. I took a urine sample and tested that and to be extra sure I did a pelvic exam and took a swab. I saw no signs of chlamydia and the swab tested negative, as did the urine. It was difficult enough to get the swab from her in the first place so I'm not doing that again. On the other hand, I was right, she isn't a virgin. See, gay people do have sex."

"That has nothing to do with her being gay, all teenagers have sex, gay or straight. They think it's cool. And they're right, it is, and so much fun. But if you didn't screw up, and they didn't screw up, her body must be lying to us. Go take out a piece of her body and make it lie to our faces. Go biopsy her intestine."

* * *

><p>She knew he'd told her about her surprise well in advance to make her think and wonder about it all day long while she was at work. And there was another thing she was grateful for – as much as she told herself she didn't deserve a boyfriend that treated her even half as well as he did, the idea of a romantic surprise had wiped all other thoughts from her mind. For the first time in a long time, she left the hospital at exactly 6 o'clock, completely ignoring everyone who tried to catch her attention as she left the building. The frost that lay delicately on the ground crunched under her heels as she crossed the car park, and she pulled her Blackberry out of her pocket as she slid into her car. The starting of the engine masked the sound of her cell phone turning off, and she dropped it in her hand bag on the passenger seat as she pulled out of the hospital grounds and on to the dimly lit main road. She usually hated driving in the dark but for the first time since 2am that morning she felt truly calm, and at peace. In the back of her mind she was sure it wouldn't last, because it would never be that easy just to shelve her indiscretion somewhere and never have to think of it again – that wasn't how it worked and she knew it. But right now, it finally was not at the forefront of her mind and she wasn't going to waste this opportunity.<p>

The gravel of her driveway crunched underneath the weight of her car tyres as she smoothly pulled up to her house. Out of pure instinct, she began searching through her bag for her key chain but when she reached the door and tried the handle she found it was already open. She stepped inside and felt a wave of heat sweep over her, locked the door for the night and slipped out of her heels. Now 3 and a half inches shorter than she had been at work, she hung her coat and scarf on the bottom of the stairs and left her hand bag in the hallway, before going in search of her boyfriend and her daughter.

"I'm home!" Cuddy called, as she wandered through the seemingly deserted house, until she heard a familiar giggle from upstairs. Hearing her daughter laugh never failed to make her smile and she broke out in a grin as she began to climb the stairs. "I hear someone laughing! Rachel, I know it's you."

More giggling was followed by her daughter's favourite, and possibly only, word. "Mama!" But then Cuddy heard a male voice that definitely sustained her smile.

"Ssssssh, remember what I told you, we're supposed to be hiding from her!"

As she reached the top of the stairs, she saw the light in the bathroom was on and the taps were allowing water to slowly fill the bath, but the voices she could hear were coming from her daughter's bedroom, where again the light was on and the door was ajar. "Hiding from me, are we? Well, I found you!" She grinned at the sight of her beautiful little girl and her handsome man, when she entered the room. Immediately, she ran over to where Rachel was sitting on the floor with her blanket, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Was Lucas getting you ready to have a bath? Well, mommy's home now so we can give you a bath together." And then she moved over to give Lucas a kiss on the cheek. "Good evening." And she couldn't resist. "Do I get my surprise yet?"

"After Rachel's had a bath and gone to bed!" But Lucas was determined not to settle for just a kiss on the cheek so turned her face towards him and left a lingering kiss on her lips.

In response, she smacked him playfully on the arm but couldn't help smiling. "Fine, I'll wait." And then she turned and scooped Rachel up in her arms, carrying her to the bathroom. "Come on little miss, let's get those clothes off and get you clean. Where you a good girl for Lucas today while mommy was at work? If you were, you can have your ducks in the bath with you, and some big bubbles!"

Rachel nodded her head vigorously and proudly and sat still as her mom placed her on the floor and gently tugged her t-shirt over her head, and then slipped her socks off her feet and her skirt over her diaper, and tossed all four garments in the direction of the laundry basket.

To check the temperature of the water, Cuddy slipped her whole hand into it and then shook it dry, before resting the back of her hand gently on her forehead. Satisfied that it wasn't too hot, or too deep, she turned off the taps, and added Rachel's favourite rubber ducks and boats to the water. "Lucas, she's ready, where are you?"

"I'm coming…" But the reaction was delayed and it took him more than two minutes to return to the bathroom, and by then Cuddy was struggling to remove Rachel's diaper with one hand, seen as the other one was wet, so he rushed in to help.

"Where did you go?" She asked curiously, as she lifted Rachel up and slipped her slowly and gently into the bath.

They caught each other's eye for a moment and he smiled mysteriously. "Never you mind."

Trying to convince herself not to mention it again, and actually have enough self control to forget about it completely, she grabbed one of the floating ducks and started racing it around the bathtub, jumping over Rachel and big mountains of bubbles and splashing water up slightly as it went. Rachel kept giggling so she continued, faster and faster until it hit the water so quickly that it made a rather large splash that managed to make Lucas quite wet and covered in bubbles. Upon noticing this, Rachel pointed and laughed, who in turn brought it to the attention of her mom, who fell about laughing. "Sorry sweetheart, I didn't mean to."

"I don't believe that for a minute." To get his own back and exact his revenge, he grabbed the bubbles on his shirt and wiped them on her perfectly styled hair, and then began flicking more towards her mischievously.

Never one to back down from a challenge, Cuddy collected her own stash of ammunition and tried a new, slightly more inventive tactic – blowing them towards him. And when that didn't work, she reverted to old fashioned wiping them on every place of him she could reach, still unable to stop giggling as her daughter's laughter was infectious.

"Okay, this is war." Lucas grinned and dipped his finger tips into the bath, and began using the water on his fingers to flick at her repeatedly.

She gasped in shock, quite unprepared for the water hitting her. "Oh, you little… Right, that's it." She cupped her hands and scooped some water up from the bath into them – Rachel was also contributing to the water and bubble fight by wriggling and splashing around increasingly excitedly, the more excitable the two adults got – and threw it straight at him the best she could. His face and shirt were completely soaked and he had water dripping from his hair, and at that sight she could control her laughter no more and broke into a hysterical fit, practically falling into his arms as she was unable to hold herself up.

"Oh, I'll get you for that Lisa Cuddy, just you wait, and that's a promise." He shook his wet hair all over her and kissed her on the cheek playfully, watching her in slight surprise as he was caught off guard by how beautiful she managed to look half soaking wet, still in her work clothes, and the other half of her covered in bubbles.

She grabbed the soap from the side of the bath and intentionally stuck her ass out as she leant over the edge to reach in and wash Rachel down, but as she did so, she continued to talk to her boyfriend. "Oh will you now? And how are you planning to do that? Torture me for twice as long about my surprise? Oh, wait, I shouldn't give you ideas…"

Lucas made as if he was seriously considering possibility but then decided to decline that choice of punishment. "No, I can't do that; it would spoil all my fun…" But he spoke rather slower than usual as he was slightly distracted. He knew he was playing to her hands and even though it was obviously exactly what she was intending to do in order to get him to do exactly what she wanted him to do, every truly male part of his body couldn't focus on anything but the way she was leaning over.

"Subtlety was never your strong point Lucas." She grinned as she lifted back up straight, having washed Rachel's hair gently. She then got up and laid a towel on the floor, lifting the little girl out of the water and onto the towel to get dry. "Was that fun sweetheart? Was Lucas silly for throwing bubbles at mommy? Did he get what he deserved? He did, didn't he? Yes, he did…" She was almost talking to herself as she gently rubbed Rachel dry, who kept giggling every time the towel hit a ticklish spot.

After unbuttoning his drenched shirt, and leaving it in the pile with Rachel's clothes to go in the laundry basket, he pushed himself up from the floor and headed for the door, smiling fondly at the toddler. "I'll go and get a clean diaper and her baby gro."

But Lucas, although unintentionally unlike she had, had the same effect on her as she did on him, and she momentarily stopped drying Rachel to catch a glimpse of his bare chest. However, as soon as she realised what she was doing, she jolted back to her senses quickly enough so that he hadn't even noticed anything had happened. "Thanks. On your back Rachel, diaper time!"

Moments later, he returned with a clean diaper and her favourite, softest baby gro in his hands and handed them to his girlfriend, along with a peck on the cheek, before returning to kneeling beside her to lend a hand if necessary.

Once Rachel was ready for bed, Cuddy carried her through to her cot and dimmed the lights in her room. Lucas took this as his cue to leave mother and daughter alone, as he knew she spent her life beating herself up about not spending enough time with her baby, therefore putting Rachel to bed was always a special time for her. But this time, he decided to make use of his spare time and instead of making himself comfy on the sofa and turning on the TV, he stuck his head into her bedroom to check the envelope he'd left was still on the bed and then crept down the stairs. He went in to the fridge, and then one of the cupboards, and poured her a glass of her favourite South African red wine, and one for himself, then carried them both upstairs and set them down on each bedside table, then sat on the bed. By the time he'd finished, he heard he was just in time as there was the click of the catch on Rachel's bedroom door.

Cuddy rubbed her eyes slightly, tired, as she opened her bedroom door and immediately went to put the baby monitor in her left hand down on the bedside cabinet. When she got there, she saw the glass of wine and smiled softly, turning to Lucas. "Thank you, you didn't have to do that." She sat down on the edge of the bed beside him, and placed a grateful kiss on his lips before beginning to take her tights off under her skirt. As she battled to do so carefully, without laddering them, she cheekily asked, "So is that my surprise you've been harping on about all day?"

"You really think I'd disappoint you that much? You really think I'd hold you in suspense for so long and then only get you a glass of wine at the end?" He managed to make himself look offended by the accusation, but it didn't last for long because he was the world's most terrible liar.

She grinned, intentionally deigning to answer that question and hoping he wouldn't notice. "What is it then? Come on, tell me, please…" Finally triumphing in the battle with her skin coloured tights, she slipped them off completely then discarded them carelessly in to the corner of the room.

He turned and reached behind him, picking up the envelope he'd left lying on the bed, and handed it to her. Although he was smiling, it was quite obvious that he was also extremely anxious and nervous in wait of her reaction. "I hope you like it, and I honestly do hope it's not a disappointment."

"Of course I'll love it." Pressing a reassuring kiss to his cheek, she eagerly fought her way into the envelope in an excited manner that resembled a toddler ripping into the wrapping paper on presents on Christmas morning. Finally reaching the present with him, she found a booking reservation for a double room with a cot at the Chateau Inn, in Spring Lake, from Friday to Sunday, and three tickets for the Peaceable Kingdom Petting Zoo for Saturday morning. She was stunned into silence, not even believing Lucas was capable of organising his own wardrobe, never mind a weekend away with activities included for all three of them, as a family. Feeling so touched by his thoughtfulness and his effort, and once again now plagued by the feeling that she didn't deserve him, or all of this, she had to fight to stop the tears from falling. She looked up at him and smiled widely, still almost speechless. "Wow, thank you Lucas… Wow. That, that's so wonderful, and amazing, thank you…"

He let out a highly audible sigh of relief when she finally spoke, and broke in to a wide grin of his own, and wrapped his arms around her. "Thank God for that… You're very welcome, you deserve it."

At this, she faltered a little bit, but only for a second and she hoped he hadn't noticed. She kissed him slowly, and passionately, possibly as a distraction, just in case he had noticed, and then looked him mischievously in the eyes. "You mentioned sexual favours, too…"

* * *

><p>If anyone walked in to House's office at that moment in time, they most likely would have assumed it was empty. All the lights were off, both rooms were sunk in to pitch darkness, both in a cold, stony silence and there was no movement whatsoever in either the outer or inner office. But in fact, that assumption would be completely wrong, because in fact, surprisingly enough at 9 o'clock at night when he'd usually be at home stuffing his face, drinking bourbon and watching porn, House was sitting in his own office. And in fact, he was actually enjoying the darkness, and the silence, and the stillness. He preferred it that way. It gave him a chance to think more clearly, without interruptions and distractions presented by outside influences – namely, other human beings.<p>

He was thinking about his case. The patient had begun presenting with symptoms that suggested Crohn's Disease, but the biopsy had shown that it wasn't Crohn's, which was indicative of Reiter's Syndrome, but they still hadn't managed to find the infection causing the auto immune reaction. Against his usual philosophy and his normal beliefs, he knew the answer must be something they'd already considered, because there were only a handful of causes for reactive arthritis, so they must have been wrong at some point. One of their assumptions must have been wrong. He began talking the case through to himself.

"We're assuming she has Reiter's Syndrome. That can't be wrong because they've done the tests to prove it, and symptoms never lie. We're assuming she has an infection that caused the Reiter's Syndrome. That can't be wrong beca-"

He didn't get any further, as he had an epiphany. He picked up the phone on his desk and paged his fellows – Dr. Hadley, Dr. Foreman and Dr. Taub – and then limped as fast as he could towards the patient's room, slightly disappointed by the fact that there had been no one there to witness his miraculous epiphany. When he reached the room, he pulled the sliding doors open and walked straight inside, announcing the conclusion he had come to. "Your daughter is gay."

There was a huge outburst of muttering and then raised voices followed by complete outrage that followed his statement. Both the parents of the teenage girl lying on the hospital bed launched into long winded moral speeches about religion and sin and betrayal of confidence and breaching the terms of their contract, and also asking who the hell he was.

House allowed them to do so for a limited period of time, until he saw his employees walk into the patient's room, and then he held his hand up impressively too silence the two parents. "Be silent, for the Lord is about to speak." He then cleared his throat and began to explain. "Your daughter has chlamydia. Well, she_ had _chlamydia, because if she still had it now, it would have shown up on Taub's vaginal swab. She is suffering from an auto immune disease called Reiter's Syndrome, which is when the immune systems goes into over drive and goes past attacking an infection and instead attacks itself – this particular one causing problems with the eyes, joints and genital regions. But Reiter's Syndrome can only be caused by a very small number of infections, and our tests for every single one came back negative. So the only explanation I can give you is that your daughter-"

"Annie." Thirteen interjected, feeling it may calm the parents slightly if they thought their daughter's doctor even bothered to learn her name.

"-_Annie_, had chlamydia in the last month. She took the prescription written for her by the doctor, but by the time the infection had cleared up, the auto immune reaction had already begun occurring. And even when the bacteria were no longer there, the immune system didn't stop trying to attack it, hence why the disease has occurred when no current chlamydia infection is present."

Annie's mother, still clearly shaking with anger, spoke only when she was sure House was finished. "I assume this means you are Dr. House, the one we brought our daughter here to be treated by especially and the one whom we haven't seen at all during the course of her stay here up until now. But your reputation precedes you and if that's what you think is wrong with her, then we're just going to have to trust you, and take you on your word. How do you treat it?"

"Usual treatment would be antibiotics for the infection causing the reaction and steroids for the reaction itself. Since there is no infection left, there is no need for antibiotics, and she's already on steroids. So we'll double the dose and hope that works. But this is bad news for you." House couldn't help but have that smug, self satisfied look that he always had when he knew something everyone else didn't.

Annie's father simply looked annoyed; as he looked form the doctor in front of him to his helpless daughter who lay sleeping on the bed, too exhausted to even stay awake through shouting in her room. "How the hell is that bad news? She's going to get better, isn't she? She's going to be okay?"

House braced himself for the explosion that would follow his words. "Because your daughter is gay, didn't I open with that?"After a pause to let the shouting of the parents – who were angry because he was damning their religious beliefs – and his fellows – who had, up until now, stayed silent because they knew just to let House do his thing, but who were now angry because they knew he was just intentionally trying to stir up trouble to see what happened – begin, he then continued on his explanation, consistently talking over all of them loudly until every single one of them had stopped and began listening to him again. "If she was claiming she was gay before even going out with a guy then I would say hey, be sceptical, but to have chlamydia she must have actually had sex with a guy. And if, after that, she still thinks she's gay, I think that's the nearest thing to confirmation you're ever going to get so you might as well accept it." And then he paused for a moment to study the parent's reactions to his words, before becoming thoughtful again. "Why aren't you surprised when I've just told you that your daughter has had sex, and got an STD? You get insanely angry when you think she might be inclined to have relationships with other girls rather than boys, yet when I tell you she's put herself in that sort of danger, you don't even flinch? You knew, that's why, isn't it? You told her to… You thought forcing her to have sex with a guy would make her straight. Well, it doesn't work like that; all you did was give your daughter chlamydia, and almost kill her." And with that dramatic monologue, he turned to walk out the room, and as he passed his stunned fellows, he spoke to them quite loud. "Make sure you report them to child services, they're effectively raping their own daughter."


	6. Chapter 6

**Hey guys, thanks so much for the reviews! Honestly, your loyalty means so much to me, the fact that you guys are coming back to read, and review, every time I update really makes my day!**

**You'll probably be glad to hear of no Lucas in this chapter, and also, this is where the first important events of the story occur! And I hope you're all liking the intercepts of the case too - I involve it a lot in my writing because I wanted to keep it as true to the show as possible!**

**Anyway, enough of my talk, on with the chapter! Enjoy, and please leave a review! xxxxx**

**VI**

"I've found you another case." Cuddy had been waiting all morning for House to finally arrive at the hospital, and today he was even later than usual – it was 12 o'clock noon by the time she heard him, from her office, insulting the male nurse at the nurse's station in the lobby. He can usually manage to make it in for 10am, only one and a half hours later than he should be arriving. Although, she had a sneaking suspicion that he knew that upon her arrival that morning she would find the papers on her desk for the discharge of his patient, and therefore she would make a point of finding him a new one as soon as physically possible. So instead, she gave him forty five minutes after arriving to let him think he'd got away with it, before taking the file up to his office.

House pouted in such a way that resembled a toddler being told to tidy up all of his toys and go and do his homework. "Oh, but muuuuuuuuuuuum. Not yet, I only just finished the last one! Pleeeeeeease?" And he took the file she was holding off her very reluctantly, tossing it on to the glass table at which his employees were sitting.

"If you have a problem with me actually expecting you to do your job, I advise you to go and talk to Cameron about it – she is the one that keeps finding me cases for you when they come in to the ER. Otherwise, shut up and read the file." She folded her arms in front of her chest and then leant against the wall near the door of his office.

Making a rather patronising gesture towards the door, he hinted that she leave. "Okay, and now you've done your job of providing me a case that I neither want, nor care about, therefore you can leave now. I don't need you here to observe my differential diagnosis either; I don't think that's part of _your _job."

She eyed him suspiciously but could think of absolutely no rational reason for her to stay during the ddx, therefore sighed, pushed herself up off the wall without even uncrossing her arms. She then scowled at him but in a very, very subtle way, and stalked out of the office and down the corridor and to the elevator back to her own office, killer heels clicking almost menacingly as she walked.

He watched her intently as she left and only when he was entirely sure she was completely out of sight did he then begin to limp after her, as quick as his bum leg and his cane would carry him. Just as he walked out the door, he realised he hadn't actually given an explanation to his team, nor had he given them any instructions, so he stuck his head back around the glass door so they could hear him. "As my boss suggested, I'm going down to the ER to have a little word with Dr. Cameron. While I'm gone, just… read the file, bounce a few ideas around, you know, try and be a little bit useful. And whatever you do, keep out of Cuddy's way, and don't tell her where I am." And with that he limped off with a remarkably surprising amount of speed for a cripple. He saw the elevator doors closing in front of him, so as soon as he was close enough he stuck out his cane and jammed it in the doors, to give him the time to get in the elevator before it left. All the doctors, and patients, already packed side by side like sardines in order to fit in, scowled and tutted loudly and obviously to show their displeasure with his stunt. Seemingly oblivious of the angry atmosphere surrounding him, he stood shamelessly humming until the elevator reached the lobby, then made sure he was the first to leave.

Upon entering the ER, he limped towards the nurses' station and leant against the counter. Out of sight to the nurses inside the station, he tapped his cane against the counter repeatedly in order to get their attention, and when one eventually did look up, he acted as if nothing at all had happened. "Er, hello, I'm looking for Dr. Cameron?"

Without a word and with a look that would turn a weaker man into a quivering mess, the nurse pointed to the cubicle in the corner of the emergency room, with the curtains around it.

"Why thank you. And I'll be sure to inform her when I see her, how welcoming and polite her nurses are." Without waiting for a response, he made a beeline towards the area he had been directed to and without making anyone inside aware of his incoming presence, he walked straight into the cubicle to discover the head of the emergency room examining a man's swollen testicle. At this, he wrinkled his nose and moved backwards as if the victim was diseased. "Oh dear, Dr. Cameron, are Chase's not enough for you anymore? Or are they just not mature enough, and you need someone with more experience, that knows what they're doing? If that's the case, you know my services are available whenever you might need them…"

Allison Cameron didn't even flinch. She was so used to his sexually suggestive comments and his incredibly annoying desire to seemingly only want her when he can't have her, that it didn't even warrant a reaction anymore. "Chase's services are just fine thank you very much, so yours won't be required. Now was there something you actually wanted, are you just here to annoy me? Or to hide from Cuddy?"

Ignoring the question, House pressed on with what he suspected most likely came under her first suggestion of his reason to be here. "You know, you really need to sort out those nurses – crack the whip and keep them in line – one of them was so rude to me when I asked where you were."

"There's nothing wrong with my nurses, they are perfectly polite to everyone else who comes into the ER, they just don't like you." And then she looked up at the patient and smiled reassuringly. "You'll just feel a slight pinch Mr. Watkins, nothing to worry about." She then pulled the cap off a syringe with her teeth and inserted the needle in to the swollen testicle, before sucking out some of the puss coloured liquid slowly.

House looked flabbergasted and mortally offended. "Why don't they like me?"

"Stop pretending, House, nobody likes you. I'm not even sure you like you. I'm sure Wilson probably doesn't even like you, he just enables you. Now what do you want?" After getting a decent sample, Cameron removed the needle and put the cap back on before turning to Mr. Watkins, who was now a little green in the face and looked slightly nauseous; probably partially because of the pain and partially because of the puss he'd just seen come out of his balls. "I'll send this off for testing, and I'll come and let you know the results. Let one of the nurses know if you need any more painkillers or assistance and I'll check on you in a bit." And then she walked out of the cubicle, continuing with her job as if he weren't following her around with her every move.

Struggling to keep up with her as a bum leg and a cane weren't really great tools to beat the land speed record, he was finding it hard to follow her around completely but he was doing the best he could. When he fell behind, he resorted to simply shouting at her. "Will you stop finding Cuddy cases to give to me? It's hard enough to keep her at bay, I don't need you being the little teacher's pet that everyone wants to punch at school and helping her out, by handing her things that annoy me. Like work."

Only then did she stop moving, drop the files she had in her hand on top of the counter at the nurses' station, put one hand on her hip and turn around to talk to him properly. "If you must know, I only do it as a favour to you, because the ones I find for her I think you'd find a lot more interesting than the ones she finds. And even if she fails to find one at all, she wouldn't leave you alone so I thought you'd much rather be diagnosing and therefore avoiding her than have her on your back about all the paperwork you've forgotten to do or lost since I left. So if I were you, I'd be thanking me." And with that she walked off again, so fast he had no chance of chasing her.

So instead, he called after her, as loud as he could possibly manage. "Thank you Dr. Cameron, feel free to take advantage of my gratitude in any way you may wish!"

* * *

><p>Cuddy was just having one of those mornings. And despite how much of a good mood Lucas had managed to put her in last night, and that morning before she left for work, she was already up tight, stressed out and extremely short tempered. Most likely it was because she'd never left her beloved hospital for longer than a day in a very, very long time and now she was preparing to leave it for a whole weekend, so there was a lot to sort out and get in order. Anyone who had already encountered her that morning was making it their business to stay out of her way as much as feasibly possible, and anyone who was forced to face her was making their visit as quick as possible.<p>

Unfortunately for Wilson, he hadn't already encountered her that morning and no one had warned him of her completely vile mood. If they had he most definitely would have thought twice about what he was about to do. But instead, he walked straight in to the lion's den and opened with a line that set the tone for the rest of the conversation – and it wasn't a pleasant one. "Why won't you just give him a chance? Go on one date, see what happens. If it all goes disastrously wrong, then I promise I'll never ever ask you to do it again."

She looked up with a glare as sharp as daggers. "Not now, Wilson. Not that I ever want to have this conversation with you at all, but now is really not the best time to try, trust me." And she went straight back to sorting her over flowing inbox in to separate piles and in chronological order ready for filing. It wasn't actually a difficult job, she was just so harassed that she wasn't concentrating and was making mistakes, which was making her even more wound up.

Sadly, he also really did not have the concept of when to shut up and walk away. "No, I'm not having it. I'm not having you try and brush me off because you don't want to talk about it or have to face it at all. Well, I'm not going away. I'm not going away until we've had a proper conversation about this and you've either agreed to give him a chance or you've given me a good reason why you won't." And with that, he stood his ground and sat resolutely down on the sofa in her office, determined not to move.

"For God's sake, can't you take no for an answer? I've waited for him for years. For years, I've had failed relationships because no one is exciting enough, challenging enough, because no one is him. Every relationship I've had since I hired him back I've compared to him, and I never even had a relationship with him. It was a one night stand over 20 years ago when we were both still students. And you know what, because of that I had a baby without a father. I couldn't settle down because I couldn't settle for anyone that wasn't him. And I'm nearly 39 years old – I can't play this game for the rest of my life. You didn't believe me when I said I'd moved on, and judging by the fact that you're here and trying again you still don't. But it's true. I'm not pining after him anymore. He had his chance with me and he lost it and I'm not living my life based on how it might affect him or you anymore. I have my own life to live. The flirting was fun – it still is – but he isn't a man I could ever have a relationship with." She slammed the files she was sorting down on to her desk with a little more force than seemingly necessary, as if to enforce her point. She was angry, but she wasn't quite sure why, although she had a sneaking suspicion it was directed at herself.

He held his hands up defensively as if to protect himself from her antagonism. Everything she was saying made sense and he knew it and that's why he was so frustrated, but he remained calm and collected, although a little exasperated. "Why not? He's _changed_ Cuddy – detoxing and rehab changed him. This is the best and possibly only chance you'll ever have."

"It's not worth the risk Wilson, not anymore…"

"Why not?" He repeated, this time with even more force and exasperation, as if desperately trying to talk sense into her. "You're still yet to give me a better reason than it being too late. It doesn't have to be too late; you don't have to wait for him anymore. He's here, he's willing and he's as ready as he'll ever be. Only you're too much of a coward to take a chance on him anymore. And I'm surprised to be saying that, because I never ever thought I'd have any grounds to call you a coward." He was trying House's technique of angering her to bring out her emotions and make her see sense.

At that, Cuddy tried her best not to get heated with him because this was not the time or the place, and the subject wasn't worth having an argument with him over but he really rattled her cage. "A coward? You think I'm being a coward for wanting to protect myself from inevitable pain. And you think I'm a coward for trying to protect my daughter?"

Wilson could tell he'd got to her and as much as he didn't like it, he kept telling himself that if it actually did what he intended it to, it might actually make her happier in the long run. So it was all for the greater good, really. "I think you're a coward for using Rachel as an excuse. Rachel isn't going to be there on a date – that's all you need to give him, to prove that he's different now. And as for protecting yourself from pain? Yes, that is cowardly, because we all have to take the leap of faith sometimes."

She was beginning to get frustrated because all her reasons were flimsy, as she couldn't tell him the real reason. She still wasn't ready to make it common knowledge that she was seeing someone else, especially not considering who it was. So she settled for shaking her head distractedly and attempting to keep her temper at bay. "You don't understand, at all…"

"I've got two tickets to a theatre show this weekend, I can look after Rachel for the evening, let him tak-"

"No! What can't you understand about the word no? Now if you've got nothing of importance to say to me then I suggest you get out of my office before I kill you, because I have a lot of things to do and organise before the weekend." She determinedly didn't look at him because she didn't want him to see how much emotion he'd managed to provoke in her, so instead she stared intently at the papers she had returned to sorting and filing.

Resigned to the fact that this was a lost cause and that also this might have not been the best of times to bother her, he stood up graciously and did as he was told. However, when he reached the door, he realised what she had said and turned to look at her, highly confused. "A lot to organize before the weekend, what do you mean? What for?"

She didn't even look up when she answered him, nor did she think about what she was saying, because she was too distracted by what she was doing. "Yes, I'm taking Rachel away for the weekend, up to Spring Lake, and we're going to go to the Petting Zoo and some other stuff. I want us to have some quality time together because I don't want to be one of those mothers that never see their kids." Her voice then became a little muffled as she bent down behind her desk to file the pile of paperwork she'd just sorted.

"Oh, that'll be nice. Well, enjoy yourselves." But he still had a puzzled look on his face when he left the room.

Only when she was sure he was out of the room did she resurface from behind her desk. She was flustered and stressed without being quite sure why. All she knew for the first time in a long, long time, she couldn't wait to get out of there.

* * *

><p>Wilson wondered why he hadn't thought of there first. The moment he left Cuddy's office, he went to look for House. When he wasn't in his own office, Wilson looked in his favourite haunts – his office, the morgue, the doctor's lounge, an empty clinic room – predominantly used for hiding from his boss. His final resort was to check the rooms of comatose patients, and in one was where he found his best friend with a packet of chips, playing computer games on the rooms inbuilt TV.<p>

House was so engrossed in the game that he didn't even notice when Wilson came in, and he only did when he noticed someone stealing his chips. "Oi, get your own! What do you want anyway?"

Wilson attempted to look immediately offended. "Aren't I allowed to just come and see you, be social?"

"No, what do you want?" But immediately, House was looking straight back at the game as if his friend was no longer of any interest to him whatsoever.

Knowing there was no point in lying to House, Wilson sighed. "Okay you're right I do want somthi-" And then he noticed that House was actually paying no attention what so ever to anything that he said, and had returned to crashing and blowing up cars violently, with a hint of sadism, on the computer game. "Do I have to unplug that to make you listen to me?"

House tutted but politely paused the game and turned to look at Wilson. "Spit it out then, quickly. What do you want? I'm going for a high score."

"I spoke to Cuddy again." Wilson almost winced as he continued, remembering how painful the conversation had been. "She wasn't very pleased so I wouldn't worry, I won't be doing that again in a hurry."

"Oh for God's sake Wilson – I'm telling you to drop it, she's telling you to drop it. Neither of us wants you to play cupid." He grabbed a handful of chips and shoved them all in his mouth, meaning his next words were muffled and difficult to understand. "When are you going to get the message that we don't want to be set up on a blind date? We're perfectly happy as we are, thank you very much. And your love life is the one that needs significant attention, not mine."

Highly affronted by this insinuation, Wilson was momentarily distracted and went off on a tangent, which of course had been House's intention. "My love life? Why does my love life need sorting out? There's nothing wrong with my love life thank you very much…" And the expression on House's face told him that he'd fallen for his ploy hook, line and sinker, so he rushed to get back on topic. "Anyway, that's not the point. You two are so frustrating, you accidentally kissed because you felt emotional together, what bigger hint do you need?"

At that, House raised his eyebrow questioningly. "I don't think I accidentally kissed her, I think I intended to kiss her…" He paused for effect but when Wilson looked like he was about to explode as he could take sarcasm no longer, from him or Cuddy, this morning, he rushed on. "But okay, I get it, that's not your point. Let's say you are right, which I'm not saying you are, and we do want each other but just don't want to admit it. I think you're missing a fundamental issue in this whole scheme. There must be a reason that we don't want to admit it…"

"Because you're both too bloody stubborn to give in to your feelings and admit that might actually like one another, never mind love one another!"

"Woah, who said anything about love? I just want to hit that…" House clearly no longer found this conversation interesting to returned to playing his computer game – taking it off pause and immediately swerving and diving as if he were the controller. And then he continued to speak, attempting to multi task, which caused his words to come out much slower and his face was tense with concentration. "But saying I was actually going to listen to you, even after last time I listened to you becoming such a total disaster, and actually ask her out on a date, just to humour you. She'd never say yes…" And then he paused the game again, this time to think. "Unless I just turned up at her house this weekend with a bottle of wine… But that might be too forward. I could turn up with a table booked at her favourite restaurant?" By now, he was no longer talking to Wilson, merely talking to himself and thinking out loud.

"You can't, she's away this weekend." Wilson cursed her, and the fact that he may have finally got his best friend to see sense, when Cuddy wasn't going to be here to be on the receiving end of it.

Only that fact made House stop in his tracks and crash his computerised car, causing it to explode and burn in computerised plumes of thick black smoke. "She's going away this weekend? Why, what for? Where?"

Wilson could sense where this conversation was leading and that made him extremely reluctant to reveal any of the information that Cuddy had given him about her weekend away because otherwise it might result in her committing a double murder. "I don't know where she's going, she didn't say, but I know she's taking Rachel away for the weekend to have some quality time together. You know, mother and daughter stuff." It was clear he was very awkward about his answer to the question, but luckily for him, House seemed preoccupied.

"She hasn't been away from the hospital for longer than a day since she chaperoned me to Singapore for that conference, and only then she left the more responsible of her two babies to look after himself for a couple of days because I was unable to be trusted…" House was back into deep thought, as if there was nobody else present in the room.

"House, don't even think about following her out there. I've spent the last god knows how long trying to convince her that you've actually changed since you've come off the drugs and been in rehab, but if you go after her and harass her, trying to find out what she's doing and why she's there, it'll prove the absolute opposite. That's what old, drugged up and crazy House would do. New, rational and calm House waits until she gets back and then carries out his idea just as if she'd never been away." Extremely nervous about House being in deep thought, Wilson hoped that Cuddy meant enough to him – deep down inside where he knew he wanted her and this might be his last chance – to let his curiosity go and leave her alone.

"Yeah…" House answered distractedly, and got up, letting the controller clatter loudly to the floor, and limped out the room without a word.


	7. Chapter 7

**Thank you for all your reviews guys! I love that you've all come to pretty much the same conclusion about what's going to happen next!**

**Here's a really long chapter for you - I meant to post it before I went out tonight but with a scheduling disaster, that didn't go as planned. I hope you like it, and please leave a review on your way out! Now, go see if your predictions were right xxx**

**VII**

He was well practised at planting decoys when he wanted her out of her office. This time House decided on sticking the lock on one of the toilet cubicle doors in the public ladies on the fourth floor – so when it was locked, it couldn't be reopened. Of course, in the event of a poor unsuspecting patient or family member getting stuck inside a toilet stall for a considerable amount of time, the Dean of Medicine would be paged. Because, of course, it's her hospital, and she is in charge of any mishaps like this that may occur, totally by accident. And then, because it is her hospital, she would be expected to wait there until the victim was freed from their plastic cage, to supervise any escape attempts or attempts to let her out. He knew that as a result of all these responsibilities, if this unfortunate event were to occur, she would vacate her office for upwards of an hour, which would give him upwards of an hour to search it to find out what had prompted her sudden desire to get away from PPTH, and where she was actually going. He was baring in mind what Wilson had said – that this wasn't the new House, this was the sort of crazy and obsessive thing that the old House would have done – but he told himself that if she never found out then it was no harm, no foul. What she didn't know wouldn't hurt her, or his chances with her.

So, when Thirteen returned from the bathroom around about quarter past three to tell him that there was a 7 year old, extremely brattish girl locked in a cubicle on the fourth floor and she was screaming the hospital down so the nurses had had to page Dr. Cuddy to go and sort it out, he left it for a couple of minutes or so. Then he got up and left his office without a word, completely disregarding the fact that his team were attempting to tell him about the new case Cuddy brought up that morning, taking the elevator down to the lobby. He made a beeline for the clinic but instead of taking the file that was held out to him by Nurse Brenda, he walked straight into his boss' office. Ignoring the protests by her young male personal assistant, he twisted the catch to lock the door behind him then waved as he shut the blinds covering the glass door.

Regardless of the fact that according to his calculations he should have in excess of an hour, he wanted to be out of there as quickly as he possibly could. He sat behind her desk and immediately began rooting through her drawers, only discovering the usual stationary – pens, pencils, rulers, erasers, a stapler, a hole punch – in the first drawer, and the second was filled with paperwork. He flipped through every sheet individually, in case she'd slipped something in to the middle of a pile to keep it safe and hidden. He then came to the locked drawer on the other side of her desk, so he rooted through her pencil pot for a paper clip and carefully bent it out of shape and made it as close to a long, thin, straight wire he could possibly manage, before inserting it into the key hole, just like he'd watched Foreman do a number of times before.

After a few moments of concentrated manoeuvring and an extremely tense silence, there was a loud click as the lock was released. But as he pulled the drawer open and saw only family pictures and other sickly sentimental things, he shut it again immediately and was almost relieved when he heard it click shut. By most people's standards, searching someone's office without their permission is classed as an invasion of privacy, but to House it was merely satisfying curiosity. But seeing a drawer full of private, meaningful and clearly inherited possessions was a bit too much for him. It was almost as if it reminded him that his boss was actually human, with human feelings and human emotions, not just a mechanical administrator who was categorically the enemy. He brushed off the moment of discomfort as quickly as possible and began searching her outbox and inbox, which contained nothing out of the ordinary either, other than the fact that her inbox was half its usual size, and her outbox double.

"Come on, come on, where else would she hide things from me?" He muttered to himself, almost not even aware the he was talking out loud. And then he spotted something he should have spotted the moment he entered the room – her hand bag was sitting, open, on the sofa. Where she usually kept it in her office, even he hadn't discovered yet, but she had clearly been in it when she got the page and left in such a hurry that she forgot to put it away again. He then went to look through the contents of her bag; the only essential accessory she had that wasn't in there was her cell phone, which she no doubt had with her. At the very bottom of what seemed like a bottomless pit, he found an already opened envelope with 'Lisa x' written on the front. It seemed personal, which was exactly what he was looking for, so he looked inside and saw exactly what she'd seen when she opened the very same envelope the previous evening – a booking reservation for a double room with a cot at the Chateau Inn, in Spring Lake, from Friday to Sunday, and three tickets for the Peaceable Kingdom Petting Zoo for Saturday morning.

Stupidly, it felt like the bottom had dropped out of his stomach. He felt feelings he hadn't felt in a long time – not since he found out that Stacy had got married – and it was predominantly jealousy. It was almost like, for all these years, Cuddy had been his toy – he didn't really want her, he just liked that he could have her, but by the time he'd decided he wanted her, it was too late. Someone had beaten him to it. House didn't know who it was but in that moment he had a strong and almost irrepressible desire to rip their head off. But at least he knew now that when she was telling Wilson that she'd moved on, that she didn't want him anymore, she wasn't lying just because she never did want him. He was right, she had wanted him, and he'd just left her hanging too long.

* * *

><p>"If you're done playing ridiculous games, you might actually want to have a look at this case. You know, because the guy might die and everything?"<p>

What House had seen in Cuddy's office was still playing on his mind, a lot, but there was no way on earth he was going to let any of his team think he had anything to be preoccupied about. Therefore on his return to his own office, he looked up with an expression of mock thought at Foreman's comment. "How do you know he might die, if you don't know what's wrong with him?" He pulled out his chair at the head of the table and sat down, surveying his most enduring fellow with distinct sarcasm before continuing. "And I assume you don't know what's wrong with him because you're asking me to run a differential diagnosis to find out what's wrong with him. Therefore your point is invalid." He then noticed the most unimpressed look he was getting from the other end of the table, so he added very innocently. "I'm just pointing it out!"

Clearly trying to resist the urge to scowl and taking the view that if his boss got no reaction, then he'd get bored, Foreman pressed on and began a description of the case as if House hadn't said a word. "We have a 37 year old male with fever, chills and back pain. He's been experiencing the symptoms for about 5 days and his previous doctors can find no known cause."

"The guy probably has kidney stones that he can't pass. No big deal, give him a lithotripsy and send him home. It's not like this is an unusual case – it's only landed on your desk because this guy has a hell of a lot of money and a smart ass lawyer, and Cuddy couldn't be bothered with the hassle." Taub was extremely nonchalant in his answer, something House picked up on immediately.

"Dr. Taub, how on earth could you be so cold and dismiss this patient so quickly? As Dr. Foreman said, he might die. Shouldn't you show a little bit more compassion and care? You are a doctor, after all. Besides, this case came from Dr. Cameron, so if you have an issue with it, talk to her." Using that sickly sweet and kind voice as he spoke, House mocked Taub, using the same suggestion Cuddy had given him not long ago.

"It's not like you show any compassion and care towards your patients, and you're a doctor, aren't you?" Taub bit back immediately, making the same mistake he did every time his boss mocked him – he thought he could win an argument with him. Unfortunately, there was great delight taken in proving him wrong.

House looked sarcastically startled for a second, and then marginally hurt. "Me? Of course I show compassion towards my patients – I care very much about their wellbeing. That's why, when we've finished this ddx, you can go and make sure the patient is comfortable and has everything he could possibly need, and you will be here all night in case he needs anything else." He then turned back to his other two fellows and addressed only them. "Clearly, it's not just a difficult kidney stone. What else could it be?"

"Acute pancreatitis? We haven't asked about his drinking habits, this may well have been self induced." Foreman answered immediately, as if determined to prove that he was actually more than the butt of most of House's jokes.

"Really? Or can I just pretend I didn't hear that? Foreman, have we, or have we not, had him on a heart monitor since he got here? And when on that heart monitor, has he shown any signs of abnormal heart rhythm? No, I didn't think so. So can we move on and actually have some plausible explanations for his symptoms please?"

Thirteen had been unusually quiet throughout the ddx so far, partially because she was mulling over the collection of symptoms and wondering why Cameron chose this case out of the hundreds she gets into the ER every day to give to them. However, her stony silence could have also been due to the fact that her boyfriend had politely asked her not to intervene if House was humiliating him, because he was capable of standing up for himself and if she did it for him, he simply looked weak. Therefore, she only spoke when an actual idea came into her head. "He's an athlete. With all the training he does, he probably wouldn't have notice body ache. And even if he did – he probably would have passed it off as the general pains of a heavy work out."

When she stopped speaking, House gave her a look of over exaggerated confusion. "Yes, okay, but don't stop now. Aren't you going to tell us what that could mean…?"

"Oh, right, sorry. If he has body ache, along with back pain, fever and chills, it indicates infectious endocarditis. That explains all his symptoms." When she had finished, and it seemed as though House wasn't objecting to her suggestion, Thirteen tried hard not to feel very pleased with herself.

House looked at his other two fellows questioningly. "No objections to that from dumb and dumber? Okay, then go and put him on IV broad spectrum antibiotics and see if there's any change. If not, he might need surgery but it doesn't look that bad yet so we might have caught it in time."

* * *

><p>Winter was closing in fast, which meant that darkness was closing in faster too. It was barely 6pm but they'd already been on the road for almost an hour, and it had been light when they set out but now it was almost pitch black. Luckily, Rachel was asleep in her car seat so was completely oblivious to the fact that her mom and her mom's boyfriend were completely and utterly lost.<p>

"I'm sure you were meant to turn left at that roundabout. You said you knew where you were going!" Cuddy was mildly frustrated but also found this situation marginally funny, although she was aware it would be a lot less funny if Rachel woke up before they got to the hotel.

Lucas had the over head light on and was concentrating hard, with an extremely puzzled look on his face, staring intently at the map. "I do know where I'm going, I went the right way! I just, don't know why we're not there yet, I'm sure it's here!"

Over come with a fit of giggles, she tried desperately to stifle them because she didn't want to antagonise him anymore than he already was. "Okay, well, if you're sure it's here and you're sure this is the right road, then why don't you just keep driving down this road and see if we can find it? How does that sound like for a plan?" But she was holding her tongue and trying not to tease him too much – she knew his masculinity had already been threatened that night by his inability to read a map, so she didn't want to emasculate him anymore. So instead she tried to make it so that he found the hotel, not her.

"Okay, okay fine." He handed her the map, determined not to let her down. He started then engine again and pulled off the side of the road, continuing down it with only his head lamps lighting the country lane. They seemed to be the only vehicle on the roads, which was a comfort when they didn't know where they were going. But within minutes, as he drove over the top of a small hill, the head lamps lit up a large sign with 'Chateau Inn' emblazoned on it, behind which was a huge wooden lodge that looked frankly beautiful.

When she saw the place he'd booked, she tried her best not to burst in to tears right there and then because she knew that would seem ridiculous. She was just over whelmed – with happiness, that he'd gone to this much trouble to do this for her, and for Rachel, but also with guilt, because she knew how much a place like this must have cost, and he earned a fraction of her salary; and after what she'd done, she wasn't fit for a place like this. However, she did her best to keep this feeling to herself, and as they pulled into the car park and he cut the engine, she leant over and kissed him gently. "Thank you, for all of this. Thank you so much. You really are wonderful."

He was rather taken aback by this show of gratitude, and pleased, because he'd never really been called wonderful before. "You're welcome, you deserve it. You grab Rachel, I'll grab the bags." He pecked her gently on the cheek in return before climbing out of the car and beginning to lift all the cases from the boot.

"Come on sleepy girl, I know you're tired sweetheart but you have to go upstairs to bed first. And you haven't had any tea yet, have you? No, I'm sorry, there's something in the back for you." As she took Rachel out of the car seat, Cuddy placated her with a constant stream of words, hoping that it would help keep her calm when she was waking up in a strange place she'd never been before. Rather than putting her in the push chair, she merely carried her tightly in her right arm and took the folded up chair in her left, locked the car door behind them and followed Lucas into the lobby of the inn. But just as she got inside, she heard her cell phone ringing, so she propped the push chair against the reception desk and whilst still holding Rachel, she searched for her phone in her bag that she'd slung over her left shoulder. When she dug it out, she took one look at the caller ID and quickly stopped herself from swearing in front of the baby. So she signalled to Lucas she was going to take the call outside then stepped back into the darkness, answering the call. "House, what do you want? I've just left, and I specifically asked you before I left if there was anything you needed."

"I need your signature for a procedure I need to do on my patient." House was listening intently, his ear pressed hard against the speaker, desperate to hear anything in the background that would tell him where she was. But all he could hear was wind, which only told him she was outside.

It was remarkable that, without even seeing his face, she could tell by his voice that he was screwing her around. She wasn't sure why she'd ever expected anything different – maybe because Wilson had spent so long trying to convince her that he'd changed, coupled with the fact that she wanted to believe that he really had changed, she'd convinced herself that it was true. "You think your patient has endocarditis. So you give him IV antibiotics and wait for the infection to clear. There's nothing you need me for."

"You're so suspicious, Dr. Cuddy! The IV antibiotics aren't working. We've tried broad spectrum and targeted antibiotics. I need to open him up." He was trying to sound as carefree as he possibly could, because he didn't want her to suspect there was any other reason behind the call. However, it was a bit too late because it was pretty obvious she already suspected that. Then again, why wouldn't she? Wilson's whole point had been that she doesn't trust him.

She sighed, because she was able to script this conversation before it had even started, because they'd had it so many times before. "Surgery is a bit drastic to go for straight away at this early stage. You need to give the antibiotics – both methods – more time to work. Do that, and if it makes no difference, we'll talk about surgery then. And only then."

He knew she was always much more difficult to argue with over the phone, so he was at a disadvantage in this anyway. "If it's fungal, the antibiotics are never going to work. And if we wait until your little vacation is over and see if the meds work by then, when we actually treat him, by then it could be far too late. Would you really want that on your conscience? A patient died because you thought your vacation was more important than his life?"

"Cut it out House. If you're so desperately concerned that it's fungal, test to see if it is fungal rather than taking random lucky guesses. Besides, it's not as if exploratory surgery is exceedingly dangerous, so I'm not quite sure why you rang up for my go ahead in the first place." She was trying not to get frustrated or angry, or raise her voice at all because Rachel was in her arms, but that in itself was making her right arm go numb.

"Yes, but I assumed that during the exploratory surgery, if he found he was in needed of an artificial heart valve, you'd rather we did it there and then instead of waking him up for a while then putting him under another load of general anaesthetic to do the second operation. But of course, if we're going to do that, we'll need his consent, but he can't give his consent because he'll be under, so we hit a little bit of an issue. So in that case, we need our _stunning _Dean of Medicine to come and make the decision for him. And we need someone to get us an artificial heart valve." It was more than obvious by his voice that he was extremely pleased with himself, as he was sure he'd trapped her in to a corner and given her no way out but to do as he wanted.

She wanted to scream at him but she knew this was not the time or the place, even though she could see no way out other than to agree to what he wanted, because annoyingly enough, he was right. She bit her tongue, literally extremely hard to try and prevent herself from saying something that her daughter shouldn't hear, and then replied very reluctantly. "Okay, fine, I'll come back and sign the form, but that's it House. When I'm gone this time, I'm gone, and I'm not coming back until Sunday evening. So no pulling totally ridiculous and stupid stunts or ringing me to tell me you want to perform a live post mortem. You better get all the paperwork ready for when I get there." And she ended the call, absolutely furious with him and herself, as well as totally dreading having to tell Lucas. She stuffed her cell phone back in to her hand bag in a slightly more violent fashion than was really necessary, lifted Rachel up where she'd been slipping down her arm and walked back into the warm lobby of the inn with a grimace on her face.

When she returned, Lucas' heart sank. He didn't even need her to explain, even though he knew she would anyway, he could tell by her face who'd been on the phone and what that meant she was going to have to do now. He simply sighed and held his arms out to take Rachel off her, assuming he'd keep her and feed her rather than have Cuddy take her back to the hospital and bring her all the way back again. "You are coming back, aren't you? Tonight, I mean?"

Her guilt was only exacerbated by the fact that he seemed so unsure if she was going to come back – she knew he felt like he came second to her work, to House. She took Rachel over to him then kissed him softly on the cheek. "Of course I'm coming back. This is our weekend – I've warned him, I'm sorting everything out before I leave then I'm not going back until Sunday evening. I'll be back before you know it." All the feelings of shame and self-loathing that hadn't quite disappeared since she kissed House came flooding back like the opening of a dam. As she waved goodbye to her daughter and her boyfriend, even if it only was for little more than a couple of hours, she felt tears welling up in her eyes as she drove away. Yes, she would miss them, but it wasn't that making her cry, it was knowing that she was hurting them, mainly Lucas, and that she already had hurt him.

The roads were still deserted until she got on to highway 195, and only then did she meet any more vehicles. She was concentrating hard, because once again she was driving alone in the dark, with tears streaming down her cheeks. The last night she'd done was the night it happened. Even though she wasn't familiar with the roads she was driving, she wasn't really paying any attention to where she was going, and her mind was totally preoccupied. It felt like she was driving for much longer than an hour when she finally saw the familiar lights of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, shining in the blackness. She pulled into her designated parking space and cut the engine, but didn't get out of the car immediately. Rooting around in her hand bag, she pulled out her compact mirror and examined herself in it. Her mascara and eyeliner were smudged, and even if she wiped away the tears still clinging to her eyelashes and dried the tear tracks they'd left down her face, her makeup was still a tell tale sign that she'd been crying. She reapplied it then left what felt like the safety of her car, and entered the hospital lobby.

She didn't even bother going to her own office – she wanted to be in and out of the building as quickly as she possibly could. Instead, she walked straight through the lobby and into a waiting elevator, in search of House. She rode the elevator alone and when it reached the floor of his office, she stepped out. The thick blackness outside meant the hospital corridors were lit by artificial light and her heels clicking against the linoleum flooring seemed to make a much louder noise than usual, as the hospital was quieter. Family and friends had gone home, doctors had finished their rounds. The light was switched off in his outer office but she could see a dim one in the corner of his personal office, so she made her way towards that.

"Where's the paperwork?" Cuddy spoke sharply as she opened the door and crossed the threshold into his office.

Clearly, he hadn't heard the glass door open, because House had his back to it and was startled when he heard his boss' voice. However, he spun his chair around immediately to face her. "Oh, so you came?" It wasn't the first time he'd seen her since he found out – she'd been to his office just before she left and informed him that she was leaving and that anything he might need over the weekend needed to be signed off and dealt with right there and then. He managed not to say anything, but since then he'd had time to brood and think it over. That's what made him call her to come back – he knew she was right and the patient could have waited, but he was just inventing some bullshit reason to get her back here, away from him.

She ground her teeth, annoyed with him but knowing she had no direct reason to be. If the patient was sick, it wasn't his fault, but she was sure for some reason or other he would have engineered something to make her come back. She was sure he didn't know about Lucas, so really he would have no reason to drag her back, but then he was quite sadistic and just the pleasure of ruining her weekend was probably enough for him. "What choice did I have?"

"You could have ignored me." He kept his voice steady but the urge to confront her was building. Even though he knew he actually had absolutely no right to confront her – she was a single woman with no commitments to him whatsoever, she was well within her rights to date whoever she liked. But that didn't mean he was happy about it.

"Ignored you? And have you on the other end of the phone for the rest of the weekend finding other reasons for me to come back, finding other things you need me to do? I don't think so; I'd rather get it over with now thank you." The fact that she wanted this over with as soon as humanly possible so she could get back on the road and he was now being facetious, arrogant and flippant was infuriating her even more. But she knew that was one of his favourite things – to make her angry – so she was determined to keep her cool.

Keeping his cool was something House wasn't so concerned about – in fact, he'd like nothing better but to shout at her right now, it would make him feel a whole lot better – she had hurt him. He had gone in to Mayfield for her, and regardless of who ever he met or whatever he did when he was in there, he came out wanting her. And she had taken that away from him. "Cuddy, if you thought I was going to do that, you know fine well that humouring me once wasn't going to stop me doing it over and over again. You wanted to come here, you wanted to leave wherever you've gone, which only leads me to believe you didn't even want to be there in the first place. What are you running away from? Motherhood, responsibility?"

A jibe about Rachel and her former doubts about being a mother was too much when she was tired and irritable, and not where she wanted to be because of him. "How dare you. How dare you bring Rachel in to this, or assume anything about me and my daughter based on whether I turn up to sign off heart surgery. You know nothing. Just give me the papers to sign and I'm leaving." Her face was stony; all the guilt she felt about kissing him turned into bubbling anger, as if she suddenly blamed him for it, blamed him for the kiss. She knew deep down it was just as much her fault as it was his but she didn't want to know that. She wanted to blame him.

"I know nothing? Maybe I should rephrase that. _Who _are you running away from? Honestly, I don't think it's Rachel. I think you got over all of that last year. But you are running away from someone. Who is he?" He couldn't help it; he knew he was completely undoing all the good he and Wilson may have already done by attempting to convince her that he'd changed, but as far as he was concerned, that didn't matter anymore. It made no difference. There was no point in changing because he only ever changed for her; to be with her. And now he couldn't do that because another man had taken his place, so there was really no point in changing anymore.

She didn't know how he knew but she could tell by his face this wasn't a lucky guess, or one of those stabs in the dark he sometimes attempted for the impressive effect if he was right. He knew. Somehow, he knew. And that seemed to make her even angrier, because he couldn't stop interfering in her life. She couldn't have any secrets from him, because he had to know everything. She couldn't have any privacy because he'd always make it his business to find out. He was a better detective than her boyfriend and that's what he does for a living. Her voice was beginning to raise both in pitch, because she was becoming distressed, and volume, because she was furious. "What the hell has that got to do with you? Who do you think you are? I don't have to tell you anything. I moved on, I found someone who I could rely on. Someone I could trust, someone who would be good with Rachel. And most importantly, someone who made me happy. And I'm sorry you can't appreciate that because I didn't wait for you to be ready to be all of that."

He knew she was angry, and that made her want to hurt him, so she listed all the things he wasn't and her new boyfriend was. All his faults and the reasons he wasn't good enough for her. All the things he had been trying to rectify since he got clean. So in return, he tried his best to hurt her. "You moved on? Clearly, there was something to move on from then. You had feelings for me, and I don't believe you when you say you don't anymore. You always have and you always will. You can't stop yourself – just like you couldn't stop yourself the other night. Don't tell me you just found him yesterday and you've already left your daughter in a hotel with him, because I know you'd be lying. Which means you were dating him when we kissed. You forgot to mention that one, didn't you…?" And what surprised him, is for the first time he was actually nettled by something she said. He knew, under any other circumstances that would be an extremely good sign. It meant he was starting to feel again. He was starting to care what other people thought of him and said about him; mainly Cuddy. But right now, that just reminded him of more he'd tried to do to make her want him, and that it hadn't worked.

"You really are unbelievable. And you wonder why I didn't wait for you?" Her voice was cracking at frequent intervals with the effort of not crying; she couldn't believe how much she hated him right now. "I didn't wait for you because I knew there was nothing to wait for. I knew you'd never change – you couldn't. You know what, you're right. I did have feelings for you – I had feelings for you for a long time, and that's why I could never settle. Because they weren't you. But then I realised that I have a daughter now, and I couldn't put my life on hold for you anymore. So I didn't. And I'm not going to apologise for doing something for me and my daughter." Her voice was little below shouting level and she battled to keep it there, but it took an immense amount of self control. It took even more self discipline to walk over to his desk, every step taking her closer to him, without slapping him. When she reached it, her eyes searched the table for the papers she needed to sign. "I've got nothing else to say to you House. So just give me the papers, I'll sign them, then leave me alone."

"Well there's the difference between me and you. I am sorry. I am sorry that you moved on and didn't wait for me, because we could have had something great. And you know that – that's why you're so angry." This time his voice was calmer, but he knew those words would have more impact than any insult, in fact anything at all, he could have screamed at her. Because however furious she was with him right now, he knew in her heart she knew he was right, and that's why she had waited so long for him. He picked up the papers he collected for her and tossed them carelessly across the desk at her before spinning his chair and turning his back to her completely. It may well have seemed childish and immature but he needed to end the conversation without doing any more damage than he'd already done.

She knew by turning away in his opinion the conversation was over, which was somewhat of a relief to her. Even though she knew his words were said with the sole intention of hurting her, that didn't stop them doing their job. And this weekend was supposed to be happy and enjoyable for her, and for her family, and she was determined that however hard House tried, he wasn't going to spoil it for her. She grabbed the papers he'd thrown in her direction, took a pen off his desk and scribbled down her signature. Then she dropped them both back on his desk and walked straight out the room, without looking back.

Only when he knew she must at least be at the elevator did he spin his chair back around. And even though he'd tried his best not to listen, he knew he'd heard a sob as the door swung shut behind her.


	8. Chapter 8

**Hey guys, thanks so much for all the reviews. They honestly give me so much motivation to keep writing, but I'm really starting to confuse myself because I'm writing way ahead of my posting! I'm really glad you're all still enjoying the story though - even with the presence of Lucas.**

**I have to admit, writing this next chapter was painful for me so I can imagine it might be painful for you to read - my apologies already. I think it may be a little bit of a filler chapter, but it paves the way for an important next chapter, so I hope you enjoy! xxxx**

**VIII**

Cuddy knew she had the hour drive back to the inn in Spring Lake to pull herself back together and put as much of what House said as she could out of her mind. Lucas had gone to so much effort to make this weekend absolutely perfect, and even if only because it would infuriate House even more, she was determined to make the most of that fact and enjoy it. His words were still ringing in her ears, his voice amplified by what seemed like a million times inside her head. All she wanted to do was get away; get away from him and never go back because she didn't think she could ever face him again. And she didn't know if she could trust herself around a man that had got so deeply under her skin. The darkness she was driving in felt suffocating – she felt trapped, as if she couldn't escape one small mistake she made. All she desperately wanted was to be back with her daughter and her boyfriend – a man who she hoped loved her now, and would regardless of whatever she did, and a little girl she knew loved her now, and would regardless of whatever she did. She wanted to stop feeling like a terrible, horrific person and she realised that even though she had Lucas, she'd distanced herself from him by keeping a secret from him and that meant she was just as alone as she ever had been.

She knew this is exactly what House wanted to do to her. He had planted a seed of doubt in her mind and stepped back to let it grow. And she was determined not to let him win. As guilty as it made her feel, she knew Lucas would make her feel more confident about herself – he always did. Before she even noticed, because her head was too filled with everything else she couldn't get rid of, she was pulling in to the car park of the Chateau Inn. It took a lot of restraint not to run straight in, her usually unblemished complexion wet and tear stained, and let Lucas make everything better. Once again, just as she had before entering the hospital, she reapplied her makeup so she looked flawless once again and only then realised what she'd become. Her makeup had become a mask that she hid her true feelings, her secrets, her hopes and her fears, behind. She was one of those women that she always judged – she was an unfaithful liar – or that was at least how House wanted her to feel.

As she stared at herself in the her compact mirror, she fought not to let emotion overcome her. It felt unbelievable to her that only a few days ago she was really, truly happy. And since then, in those blissful moments when she was able to forget her burden, she had flashes of how happy she had been. And now all this pain had been caused by only a few seconds of weakness in light of almost 20 years of foreplay. One kiss, and everything suddenly felt like it was falling apart. Only then did she jump a little, and her cell phone told her she had a new text message, from Lucas. He wanted her to know that he missed her and Rachel missed her mum too, and they were in room 268 when she got back.

Not wanting to be apart from him and Rachel any longer than was necessary, she checked her appearance once more, and when she was satisfied, she stepped out of the car. The cold wind that hit her was like a harsh reality, but she locked the car and made her way to the reception, then entered the elevator, hitting the button for the second floor. The room wasn't difficult to find; the hotel seemed to simply be one long, expansive corridor that twisted and turned but never stopped, and she kept walking from 201 until she reached room 268. She raised her fist to knock on the door, but before she did she hesitated and took a deep breath. Only when she was sure she was calm and collected – or as calm and collected as she could manage at this point – did she knock on the door.

Lucas leapt up at the sound of the knock, and as he heard Rachel, who was sitting on the end of the bed, cry "Mama!" in response to the noise, he scooped her up in his arms in her baby gro and carried her to the door when he opened it. He let out a huge smile when he saw his girlfriend, and stepped back to let her in to their room. It was very nice; cosy, clean, homely, and he'd already unpacked the suitcase, having put all her clothes in the provided chest of drawers and all the toiletries in the bathroom. He was actually quite proud of himself, and even though the weekend so far hadn't gone entirely to plan through no fault of his own, he was determined to make this as nice for her as he possibly could. "I thought after driving all the way to Princeton and back you wouldn't want to go downstairs for dinner tonight so I arranged for something to be brought up to us, if that's okay? I can cancel it if you like, before they make it; I ordered it for 9 o'clock so we've got another hour, I thought you might like to say goodnight to Rachel and put her down yourself, because I bathed her for you, and then you could have a little time to relax and calm now before we eat… I hope it's okay…" He spoke rather quickly as if trying to get everything out before she could tell him everything that he'd done was wrong.

Cuddy immediately sank down on the end of their double bed and held her arms out to take Rachel, holding her close to her. And then she looked up at Lucas, and an exhausted but grateful smile spread across her face. "Of course it's okay, all of it's okay. In fact, it's better than okay, all of this is amazing Lucas. Thank you, for all of this. For everything. It's wonderful." And then she turned to her daughter held in her arms. "Now Rachel, are you going to go to bed like a good girl, and mommy and Lucas will take you to the zoo tomorrow? Would you like that?" She lifted her daughter in to the cot that was beside their bed and picked up one of Rachel's story books that had been left on the beside cabinet, presumably with the intention of it being her bed time story, and once Rachel as laying flat, began to read it.

At this point, he always left them in private so he padded quietly out of the room as quickly as possible and shut himself in the bathroom. Looking at himself in the mirror, he splashed water and himself and just thought a little bit. He knew there was something bothering her at the moment but he also knew very well from experience not to bother her and ask her what it was, because that only resulted in her biting his head off – she would come to him if she was ready to and wanted to talk about anything that was bothering her. But that made things all the more frustrating when he knew there was something wrong and he knew she clearly had no intention of telling him what it was. She'd been subdued and preoccupied, and constantly worried, and he was worried it was something he'd missed, something that he should have noticed but he hadn't. Only when he could no longer hear his girlfriend's voice reading 'Ella the Spotty Dog', and could only hear silence, did he dab his face dry gently on the hand towel and then leave the small bathroom. He walked over to the bed and put his arms around her shoulders, chancing his luck and hoping if he'd judged this wrong, she'd be too tired and too grateful to be angry at him anyway. "Are you alright? Well, okay, stupid question because I know you're not alright, I can always tell when you're not alright, but you do know you can tell me what's bothering you if you need to or want to, don't you?" Again he was speaking quickly because he was anxious in case he'd done something wrong.

She rested her head against his shoulder gently, scared of how she might respond to him. Suddenly, her heart just wanted to tell him everything – to open the flood gates and let all that she was feeling pour out. And if he wanted to judge her for how she felt or what she'd done then let him, all she could ever be was honest with him. But her head was still too scared – far too scared that if he found out who she really was and what she'd done, regardless of the fact that it was a mistake and she'd wished every waking moment since that she hadn't done it, that he wouldn't want her anymore. And as per usual, she listened to her head, even if only for the simple reason that the last time she listened to her heart, she'd been regretting it ever since, and she kept her mouth shut. She smiled softly but was afraid it looked a bit more like a grimace, so spoke quickly. "I know, thank you. I guess I'm just stressed out at the moment; Wilson won't give me a moment's peace now House is out of Mayfield and living on his own again, like he expects me to do something about it. And House himself, well, he's a nightmare at the best of times but he now seems to have escalated since he came off the drugs. It's like making me angry or wasting my time is his new replacement for vicodin. It's nothing I can't handle, and it'll pass. They'll both get bored of harassing me after a while when they realise it's having no effect what so ever and it'll all go back to normal. Don't worry about me, this weekend should calm me down, anyway." But she was grateful for his concern, even though it made the roaring fire of guilt in the pit of her stomach a million times hotter, brighter and painful.

He let out a long low breath in complete relief and then smiled before kissing her on the cheek. "I do worry about you though, because I lo-" And then he faltered, and realised what he was about it say. It wasn't that he didn't want to say it, but he was worried that she wasn't ready to hear it yet, and he didn't want to scare her off. "-I really care about you." But by the time he finished his sentence and corrected himself, his face was bright red and burning with embarrassment and worry, and he looked away from her, rubbing the back of his neck anxiously.

When she realised what he was about to say, her stomach immediately twisted in to a knot but she was careful not to show any reaction on her face at all. Inside, however, she was terrified. It wasn't that she didn't want him to say it, because she did, but on the other hand if he did it would make the gravity of what she'd done to him a whole lot worse. If he really did love her, the betrayal was so much more real, and the lying about it made it even worse. She grit her teeth in preparation for possibly the best, but also the worst, thing he could possibly say right now – but then it didn't come. She looked at him for a second but noticed he couldn't quite meet her eyes. Only then did she realised how much this relationship meant to him. In that one fleeting moment she realised, he was actually scared. He was scared to say it – he obviously wanted to because he almost had without thinking, but he was too scared in case it wasn't what she wanted to hear. And in some ways she was more relieved than she probably should have been. She however didn't want him to feel awkward, so she continued on as if nothing had ever happened and as if she hadn't noticed his hesitation what so ever. "I know, thank you. You're too good to me, you know." She returned his kiss but instead went for his lips rather than his cheek in hope of distracting him from his awkwardness and embarrassment. But then she let out a large and rather unprompted yawn when she went to kiss him, and burst into a fit of giggles.

He jumped backwards slightly in surprise, as he had moved in to return her kiss, so relieved by her reaction, and instead found her yawning in his face. However, he couldn't help but laugh too and grabbed her round the waist playfully, pulling her closer to him. He pressed his face in to her hair and took in her smell as he breathed in and when he spoke, his voice was slightly muffled. "If you're tired, we can always go straight to bed you know."

When she felt him holding her so close and tightly to his body, she suddenly felt more alert and awake than she had done all day. So instead she pulled away from him a little and gave him that look that he knew all too well what it meant. It was almost a mischievous look, but she bit her lip ever so slightly so he knew it was definitely suggestive. "I'll take up your offer of going to bed, but don't expect any sleep." And when he looked marginally surprised but extremely eager upon her answer, she couldn't help but grin. "Hey, Rachel's asleep, and don't try and tell me that wasn't your main intention for this weekend anyway…" But before he could open his mouth to defend himself, she quickly kissed him and pushed him softly but authoritatively backwards so he was laying flat on the bed.

* * *

><p>Knowing that she was somewhere, probably in the depths of the country, alone with another man was torturing him much more than he expected it to. Of course, he'd never admit it, but as he tossed and turned in his own bed, he'd have given anything to be that man there with her, not him. He didn't know who he was – that was his next task, the next thing he had to find out – but he already hated his guts. And he was torturing himself even more, imagining what they were doing together right that moment, and it was a good job he didn't know that he was exactly right. Since he'd left Mayfield there had been a lot of sleepless nights, but that was usually something he could blame on the increased amount of pain he was in since coming off the vicodin and being left with only ibuprofen which barely put a dent in it at the best of times but even less so at night. But this time, the pain wasn't the reason he was still awake, in fact, he could barely feel the pain.<p>

She was the reason he was still awake. It seemed as though the pain of rejection and loss he was feeling was so much more than that of the physical pain in his leg, his leg was scarcely even noticeable. And he hated himself for it. Before Cuddy, he'd only ever let one woman turn his world upside down and that was Stacy. The first time he let her in, but that was before his leg, and after his leg he drove her away. The second time she let him in, she was even prepared to leave her husband for him, but he ran away, too scared that she was going to do the same to him again that she had done all those years ago. He'd given up the chance of trying again with her because he was too scared that she was going to hurt him again, that she was going to leave him again. So he decided not to take that risk, and not to leave himself open for the possibility of such pain.

After Stacy, he knew he'd never let a woman do that to him again. He would never let a woman have power over him again, not in the way she had at least. He'd always liked Cuddy – he'd always liked the idea of sleeping with her, at least. He'd found her extremely attractive in med school, and if possible now she was even more so. But quite possibly as a result of the pain his last relationship put him through, he'd never considered her in more than an aesthetic point of view. At least, that's what he tried to tell himself, except it was far too easy to let Wilson convince him to make a go of it with her. And then he really had started thinking. And as much as he swore he'd never get that attached to anyone else, he did without even knowing it. He only realised how much he liked and had got used to the idea of her being his girlfriend until the option was taken away and he knew it couldn't happen. The fantasy was only fun when it could possibly happen, and after that it only brought him pain.

For a moment, he had a strong urge to break something. He knew he had no right to be angry at her, but he was. He'd got clean for her, he'd worked hard and gone against so many of his principals and philosophies to prove to her that he was a man that she could actually spent the rest of her life with. And instead, she'd left him alone, just like Stacy did.

He knew continuing to think about the fact that the only two women he'd truly ever loved had left him alone would never allow him to sleep, so he desperately tried to bury his head into the case instead. But the more he tried to steer his thoughts away from her and her boyfriend, the more he couldn't get them out of his head. He pushed himself in to the sitting position in bed and without switching his reading lamp on, he fumbled for his cell phone on the bedside cabinet. He flipped it open and searched down his list of contacts until he reached her name. His finger hovered over the call button, yet he was trying his hardest to convince himself not to do it. There was a small, ever so tiny glimmer of hope, a flicker at the back of his mind that this boyfriend thing wouldn't work out, and he wanted to keep in her good books as much as possible in case that eventuality occurred and she came running in to his arms for comfort. He knew he was being sadistic but on the other hand he couldn't help it. His conscience won over the devil's advocate and he put his phone back on the cabinet, sliding back under the duvet and forcing himself to think about the only subject that he knew for certain would take his mind off Cuddy. The case.

Before he'd left, the patient had come out of surgery with no signs of infectious endocarditis. So not only was Cuddy's flying visit of absolutely no benefit whatsoever, but he still didn't know what was wrong with the patient. He knew he was alone but still spoke out loud as if someone was there to hear him. "He has fever, chills, and back pain, and it's not infectious endocarditis…" He was sure he was missing something – he didn't know why, it was just one of those feelings he often got. He searched his brain for something significant and wished he had the patient's file to look at. When he was this determined, he'd usually comb all the information they'd noted down until he found something seemingly insignificant that he could make significant to fit a wildly impossible theory that usually turned out to be right. He thought back to their differential diagnosis.

None of his fellows had mentioned a girlfriend, or any woman at all other than his mother, yet the look on Thirteen's face when she came back from attending to him for the first time told it's only story – he was clearly attractive, and bisexuals are hard to please. Thirteen was, anyway. "Why…?" He asked himself, still talking aloud as if there were someone else present. "Why would someone who's attractive enough to even get Thirteen's approval, not have a stunning woman on his arm? There's no reason… Someone like that would always have the next girl lined up and ready even if one finished with him. So, if there is no woman, there must be a problem in that department. If he has erectile dysfunction, that means it could just be prostatitis, or in the worst case scenario, a spinal cord abscess." Pretty pleased with himself, but knowing he still probably wasn't going to sleep tonight, he made a mental note to show off to his team in the morning that he'd solved the case and they could all go home until Cuddy got back.

But as he closed his eyes again and attempted to sleep, her smell came rushing back to him and the images of her with someone else returned to torture him.

* * *

><p>Even after very little sleep because Rachel had woken up early, decided she wasn't keen on the new environment and decided to scream the place down, both Cuddy and Lucas were remarkably cheerful when they reached Peaceable Kingdom Petting Zoo the next morning – though the happiness wasn't all too surprising considering the way they sent each other off to sleep last night. Rachel was wrapped up in gloves, a hat and a large coat in which she resembled a pink snowball with legs, and both adults had donned as warm clothes as they possibly could. The wheels of the pram crunched and bumped over the frost covered gravel and Rachel had a giggling fit and squealed every time it rocked slightly as if she was on a rollercoaster.<p>

"Rachel, what do you want to go and see first?" Cuddy asked as they stood together in the middle of all the enclosures around them.

"Moo, moo!" Getting very excited and attempting to jump up and down in her seat, but having distinct trouble because she was strapped tightly in, and pointing to the cows in front of them.

Smiling, Cuddy took Lucas' hand and pushed the pram with the other towards the fence at which Rachel was pointing. When they got close enough to feed the animals, she went into her coat pocket and pulled out the brown paper bag full of feed they'd bought so Rachel could give some to each of the animals. She knelt down beside her daughter's pram. "Hold out your hand sweetheart." And when she obliged, she took off the tiny mittens and poured a small amount of the brown pellets into her palm. And then she took her daughter's hand in to her own and helped her hold her hand completely flat between the bars of the fence. The nearest cow turned and shuffled towards the smell of food and then, when it was close enough, licked all the pellets out of Rachel's hand, leaving both mother and daughter with extremely sloppy, sticky and smelly hands.

Rachel giggled at the tickling feeling of the cow's tongue, but at the look of the uttermost disgust of Cuddy's face to have a hand covered in cow saliva; Lucas couldn't help but crack up laughing. "Oh come on Lisa, you must have known that was going to happen!"

With a highly unimpressed expression, and one of complete distaste, she scowled and walked towards him, before dramatically wiping all of the sticky liquid on her fingers on to his coat. "Not so funny now, is it? And you can help her feed them next time." But instead, after that she steered the pram towards the less messy animals.

They went inside a barn, where Cuddy held a white rabbit out and Lucas helped Rachel stroke it, they helped her feed a carrot to a horse, and they helped one of the farmhands collect eggs laid by the hens that morning. It was like they were becoming a real, functioning, nuclear family.


	9. Chapter 9

**Hey guys! Thanks for all the reviews and compliments, I appreciate them so much - and honestly, I'm so so sorry [SYD] I know how frustrating Luddy is, it didn't particularly enjoy writing it but I really feel it's necessary to an extremely key part in the story which is still to come, so I hope you'll forgive me for it. I've been really conscious about losing readers actually, because of all the Luddy content, but I'm hoping you guys will stick it out - if you do, I promise you'll be rewarded.**

**Shameless plug in the next sentence, but very recently I read the whole of After the Bombs by partypantscuddy , which you should all go and read if you haven't already, and in a couple of the chapters she gave small teasers to the future of the fic that didn't give anything away, but it was just nice to read so I'm going to give it a go. Please tell me if you like the idea and want me to throw it in again, or if you don't like it!**

**To wet your appetites, I can tell you that although the coming chapters are filled with various arguments and one cliffhanger ending, look out for a familiar face's first appearance and some extreme resolving of tension!**

**Okay, I've rambled on for long enough now, so I'll let you get on and read the next chapter. I'd be ever so grateful if you could keep leaving me reviews, they make me smile endlessly! :D And also, seen as this is the longest chapter yet by a mile, I think I deserve them! xxxxxxxx**

**IX**

"Morning my little cherubs, I think you will find that during my waking hours when I left work last night, I discovered what was wrong with the patient."

It was very rare that House came in at the time that his contract stated; that was far too early to expect a genius like him to get out of bed, but on the other hand, today he was unusually late, even by his own standards when Cuddy wasn't on hand to berate him. Even if he thought he could get away with flouting every rule she put in place to restrain him when she wasn't here to enforce them, their patient was still dying and usually the possibility of that happening before he diagnosed them would torture him. And if he'd known the diagnosis since last night, why was he so late? He'd waited until after lunch to grace them with his presence only to tell them that the case was over anyway. It was strange, because House was a creature of habit and this was definitely out of character.

Each one of his fellows were mulling over these very same thoughts but with their own inflections on them, but it was Taub who broke the silence and replied to them, bringing everyone back to earth and reality. "…Go on then…"

House had been getting impatient when no one seemed interested in the fact that he'd just solve a medical miracle almost in his sleep without looking at the patient file in hours, without having his team there to bounce ideas off and without having met the patient at all, so he was relieved when Taub invited him to explain this amazing occurrence. "Can you smell the patient's pee from four rooms away?"

At this, the other two members of the team raised their eyebrows, but Foreman didn't react at all. He was too used to his boss showing off and asking ridiculous questions that are supposed to mean something. "No, his urine smells normal, he's barely peeing at all, what's your point?" His expression didn't change at all and he looked thoroughly bored. He especially hated the hospital when Cuddy wasn't around because that meant House ran completely riot and rode him more than ever, and it also meant that he was left to be House's Cuddy. Not the object of his sexual fantasies part, just the conscience and the disciplining part.

"Well, Dr. Foreman, my point is, the patient has a spinal cord abscess." Sitting down at the end of the table, he watched his fellow as expressionlessly as he was watching him.

Foreman clearly didn't agree with this diagnosis and when he replied, his voice was sceptical and sarcastic. "That all the imaging all the other doctors have done has missed, and that the antibiotics haven't cleared? What is this, some super abscess, impervious to drugs?"

Tutting comically, and doing a silent impression of Foreman complaining about his ddx, House answered. "No, that would be stupid, wouldn't it. The abscess could be hiding behind its own swelling, and broad spectrum antibiotics doesn't get rid of all infections, especially not fungal infections as Dr. Cuddy so kindly pointed out to me last night when I called her. Start him on corticosteroids to reduce the inflammation and schedule him for surgery." And with that, House got up to go in to his inner office.

Before he could leave, Thirteen spoke quickly, quite shocked. "You called Dr. Cuddy? I thought she was having a weekend break with her daughter? Surely she wasn't at all impressed by that?"

House turned to answer her and did some very quick thinking. "Oh, no, she was grateful I called, she'd been begging me to for hours. Rachel was stressing her out and she needed someone to help her release all that pent up stress…"

"You talked about antibiotics and fungal infections whilst having phone sex? Yeah, that's a real turn on…" Taub rolled his eyes disbelievingly and turned away; resting his head against the glass table and waiting for the conversation to finish so they could actually go and get on with being doctors.

Thirteen personally agreed with Taub, therefore completely ignored their boss' response and moved on to her actual point. "Well, we can't just cut him from neck to tail bone and go searching for an abscess on his spine that we don't even know exists and possibly paralyse him, just because you say so."

Managing to make himself look pleasantly surprised by that fact, House paused for a second as if he were thinking. "Nope, I'm pretty sure you can. All you need to do is explain to the patient that if he doesn't agree to the surgery he _will _be paralysed, where as if he does agree to the surgery there's only a small chance he will be paralysed, and how small that chance is depends on how good his surgeon is. That sounds pretty simple to me."

"We have to get Cuddy's permission, you know that. So it's going to have to wait until she gets home tomorrow night."

House put his hand in the pocket of his jacket and brought out his cell phone, toying with it in the palm of his hand. "No, it doesn't have to wait. I'll just give her a call and get her to sanction the surgery." And House again turned to walk away but this time managed to get in to his inner office before anyone else started to talk.

"You also know that you can't just get her permission over the phone, she'd going to have to come in and sign the papers, and possibly even observe the surgery. Can't you just leave her be for this one weekend? Surely there are alternatives we can try until she comes back tomorrow. We can even run an actual differential diagnosis rather than taking your word for it that it's a spinal cord abscess, rather than jumping straight in to central nervous system surgery." However, Thirteen got up to follow him and spoke quickly as she caught the door that he let go on her and pushed her way in to the office too. She marginally felt sorry for Cuddy, who was here every possible waking moment she could be and deserved at least a weekend off more than anyone she knew.

Sitting back in his office computer chair and spinning it around so he could rest his legs on the corner of his desk, House looked deeply unconcerned as he answered. "Well, if you insist on me calling Dr. Cuddy and getting her to come in to sign another lot of forms and then even observe the surgery, then okay, that's what I'll do. I'll make sure she's aware of your deep concern for the patient and no qualms about disturbing her weekend of peace." And he picked up the telephone receiver on his desk and began to dial.

Thirteen rushed over to his desk when she saw what he was doing and immediately cut off the call. "No, don't call her and especially don't blame me. I don't think you should and regardless of whether I had told you that or not, you still would have called her. Just leave her be, for once."

"Okay, fine, I'll wait." House put the receiver back in its cradle then sat back in his chair again with his fingers clasped and looked at her perfectly innocently. "You've done your moral duty to protect her from me now; you have no other obligation to stay. Not that I know why you felt like you had any obligation to her in the first place but I can only assume it's a case of women stick together, female solidarity and all that. So go on, go and deal with the patient that you care so much about." And he gestured her towards the door.

Without moving, Thirteen watched him defiantly. "You're going to call her as soon as I leave the room anyway, aren't you?"

"Yes, and unfortunately for you Dr. Hadley, you can't stand there all afternoon, and all evening, so I suggest you don't waste any more time and go and attend to our patient. Go!"

Thirteen tried her best not to scowl because she was afraid she would look like a toddler who hadn't got her own way and stalked back in to their outer office, making no secret of the fact she was highly annoyed. She gestured to her colleagues with a stony jerk of her head and they followed her down the corridor, presumably to the patient's room.

Only then did he once again pick up the telephone receiver and dial his boss' cell phone number – he'd dialled it so many times for inappropriate and annoying reasons that he could recite it off by heart. The phone rang so many times before she finally picked up that he thought for a moment she was going to ignore him completely.

Cuddy's voice was sharp and cold, and she was making no attempt to disguise the fact that she was highly unimpressed by the fact that he was calling again. "What do you want, House? I told you not to call me again."

"And I told you not to kiss me again, that didn't stop you, did it? You know, when you just can't help yourself there's nothing you can do about it." He didn't know what made him say it but as soon as he heard her voice again he all the pain he'd tried to forget that she caused him yesterday and the sleepless night last night thinking of her had given him became an urge to make her tick.

She pressed the cell phone tightly to her ear and looked around fearfully, hoping she'd stepped far enough away from Lucas to take the call that he wouldn't have heard that dig. "If you're going to be an asshole, I'm going to turn my phone off. Just because you can't be happy yourself, it doesn't mean you have to make everyone around you miserable. Now was there actually something you wanted or are you just trying to ruin my day?" Her voice became a hiss, and she was clearly speaking through gritted teeth which he knew meant he was obviously pushing all of her buttons.

"As fun as that would have been, I actually have a medical reason for making this call. I want to look for a spinal cord abscess on his spine." He almost winced, even though there was nothing she could do to him from wherever she was, he knew her reaction would at least border on explosive.

"A spinal cord abscess? Have you taken leave of your brain, House? For starters if there was a spinal cord abscess, the antibiotics you've already given him would have treated it. And the ten other doctors he saw before you would have seen it on whatever imaging studies they did." Turning round to face her daughter and her boyfriend, she smiled at them both and Lucas caught her eye. He signalled to Rachel, and then to her changing bag, and then to the sign for the toilets, from which she interpreted that he was going to go and change Rachel's diaper. She nodded gratefully and silently mouthed 'thank you' at him, hoping he could lip read.

Casually spinning back and forth on his chair and tangling the telephone cord as he went, he countered her argument with ease, using the same justification he'd used on Foreman when he objected less than half an hour ago. "We've already established the fact that if the infection he has is a fungal infection; antibiotics are going to do absolutely nothing for him. And any doctor could have missed it on his imaging studies if it was hiding behind its own swelling. Any other objections?"

Cuddy bit down on her tongue hard to stop her making a sarcastic and biting retort because she could tell he was trying to wind her up, so he could watch her go. "Yes, I have a lot of other objections. House you're talking about surgery on his spine; this could paralyse him for life. You can't do exploratory surgery on something that dangerous on a hunch that you have no evidence whatsoever for. You need proof, what makes you think it's a spinal cord abscess anyway?" She braced herself for an extremely pathetic reason that only exacerbated his own ego.

"Erectile dysfunction, something that you probably know quite a lot about." And then House paused for a second and actually thought to himself. "Wait a minute, even my team didn't ask me that. Well that probably means they've just learnt to trust my gut instincts, maybe you should take a leaf out of their book."

Ignoring his comments, she pressed on, determined to keep this conversation as short as she possibly could as to not give him the satisfaction of knowing he was slowly ruining her weekend. "The patient admitted to erectile dysfunction?"

At that, he chose his words very carefully. "Not so much admitted, more like I summarised."

"Let me guess, you summarised from the fact that he's a good looking guy and there's been no female company in his room, therefore the only explanation for that is that there must be something wrong with him – something stopping him sowing his seed." She rolled her eyes – she didn't even need to hear it, in fact he'd become boringly predictable because she'd worked with him for so long.

"You say that like it isn't a valid assumption, Dr. Cuddy. He has a spinal abscess, there is no two ways about it and we can argue about it all you like but you know at the end of the day you're eventually going to agree with me and come back here and brief the patient and observe the surgery so can we just skip all the time in between because trust me I've got much more things I'd rather be doing than sitting alone in my office arguing with you about patient welfare."

He was using that voice that he knew infuriated her – he sounded so arrogant and so overly confident because he was so sure he was right about her, and even worse that she knew he probably was. But she was determined to prove him wrong. "I want proof House. Do the labs – they'll take twenty four hours to come back and by the time I'll be on my way back to Princeton therefore I'll sign whatever papers are necessary and tell the patient whatever he needs to know, providing that you're right." And she felt so decisive and strong at that point she went to hint the end call button when she heard him speak again.

"When do we ever get proof? We're doctors Cuddy, not lawyers. If you wait another 24 hours for the labs to come back and I'm right, I hope you have got a lawyer on hand though because I'll bet you he's going to want to sue if he ends up paralysed for the rest of his life because you didn't sanction the surgery in time. I'm as certain as we're going to get, and you've risked your career on madder ideas than this that I've given you." His voice was surprisingly softer as he spoke, completely in contrast to the tact he'd been taking with her only moments ago.

Appealing to her better nature caught her off guard and even though she knew exactly what he was doing – trying to play the guilt card – and she swore that it wasn't going to work, she could feel herself caving. "Fine, you can do the surgery tomorrow morning. I'll come back in the morning rather than in the afternoon, he can last another twelve hours."

Knowing that he'd finally got to her and once he got his foot in the door it would be easier to open it completely, he pushed her a little bit more. "No, he can't. I've already organised a surgical team who can perform the operation the moment you get here and deal with the administration, and the sooner we get this abscess out of him, the better."

"Fine." She said it before she engaged her brain and realised what she was agreeing to, and the moment her thoughts caught up with her mouth she regretted it. And what made her even angrier was the fact that she knew he'd completely and utterly played her, and she'd let him manipulate her even when it was staring her in the face. And now, not only was she going to suffer, so was Rachel, and she was going to have to explain to Lucas that he paid for a second night in the hotel for no reason.

"I knew you knew I was right." With that, he put the phone down before she had a chance to change her mind. He then got up out of his chair with a remarkable speed, with the intention of informing everyone he would need for the procedure that they'd be pulling an all nighter on Dr. Cuddy's say so, so even if she called him back it would be too late to cancel the surgery.

As she stared at her cell phone in her hand after he ended the call, she felt her skin burn hot and she felt tears well up in her eyes, making them prickly and sticky and her vision blurry. She didn't know why she was crying, this was something he did to her on a regular basis and although it more often than not made her extremely irate and angry, it had never once yet brought her to tears. In an attempt to dry her eyes and hide the tears, she dabbed them gently with the back of her hand and blinked a few times, and then saw her boyfriend emerge from the baby changing room pushing the pram with her daughter in, she smiled grimly and walked over to greet them. What made it even more heart breaking was the fact that there was a knowing look on Lucas' face, which told her he knew exactly what she was going to say before she even opened her mouth. It was such a regular occurrence in her life, he'd just got used to it. She knew that wasn't the way things should be, and she was trying to stop it, but couldn't help it. Especially now she felt so in his debt because they kissed, and he now knew she had been dating someone at the time.

Even though he knew what she was about to say, Lucas put his arm around Cuddy's shoulders and smiled gently at her. He wasn't going to say that he wasn't disappointed, because he was, but he knew this was the kind of life she led and if this is what it took to be with her, then he was more than happy to just put up with it.

* * *

><p>They had decided it would be quicker for Lucas to drop her back off at PPTH on the way back from the petting zoo and he'd take Rachel and drive back to Spring Lake, repack all their suitcases and hand over their room key before bringing it all back to her house. As she walked into the lobby for the second time during her supposed weekend break, she had never resented the place as much as she did in that moment. Although she knew it wasn't the hospitals fault that she was there, it was House's; it still reminded her of somewhere she shouldn't be right then. This time, she didn't go directly for the elevator but instead into the clinic and straight in to her plush office. Immediately she threw her hand bag down on to her sofa and kicked her shoes off like a teenage girl, but the feeling of the soft carpet on her stocking covered feet was one of the first soothing things she'd felt since her phone call with him. She sat down behind her desk and began rummaging through her drawers, looking for a copy of the form she'd need to fill out detailing the procedure the patient was undergoing, why it was being used for a diagnostic purpose and confirming that she gave her permission for this to happen. However, as she opened each drawer, she noticed things had been moved. Quite subtly, admittedly, but it had still been done.<p>

And then she realised how he found out about her boyfriend. Just before she left to go to Spring Lake the previous day, she'd spent over two hours policing an incident of a patient's sister stuck in a toilet cubicle on the fourth floor. At the time she had no reason to think it had anything to do with him, but thinking back on it now, it was exactly the sort of thing he'd do if he wanted an excuse to snoop around her office. She'd left in such a rush because the page from the nurses had been urgent, she left her hand bag out in, in fact, the same position it was in right now – lying wide open on the sofa in plain view. The tickets Lucas had given her had been still in there at that point, still in the very same envelope he'd handed them over in. it must have just been a miracle that he hadn't recognized the handwriting – because had he know the identity of the man she was going away with, she was sure the torture and torment and interruptions would have been a million times worse.

That was just another thing that she absolutely couldn't stand about him, the fact that he didn't understand any sort of boundaries and he saw no necessity for privacy inside or outside of a relationship. He didn't respect her, or anyone for that matter, enough to not cross every boundary and then some if he wanted something, or to find out something. Even though she could add that to her mental list of disadvantages of dating him, which was growing longer and longer by the second and had long surpassed the list of advantages, that somehow didn't really make her feel much better.

As she filled in the details on the form in front of her, more than once she managed to make a mistake because she was consumed with anger towards him, so much so that she was physically shaking at points. She had to take a couple of deep breaths before she thought it was safe to slip back in to her high heels, lock her hand bag away in the cupboard under her desk, and walk out of her office, back through the clinic and in to one of the elevators in the lobby. There was a number of confused looks thrown her way as it had clearly become common knowledge that she'd taken the weekend off work therefore she had no reason whatsoever to be there. They all knew however that it was probably a safe assumption that it was something to do with Dr. House and their suspicions were confirmed when she got off when the elevator reached the third floor.

Stalking in to his office with complete contempt, Cuddy forced the signed form in to his hand and spoke in almost staccato. "There's your form, where's the patient? I want this over and done with."

House heard her come in, yet he was laid back in his chair with a blind fold over his eyes and was pretending to sleep, therefore he didn't move, answer her, or even flinch when she addressed him directly.

In response to his ignorance which she most definitely was not the mood for, she walked over and ripped the blind fold from his face, and bore over him angrily. "House, get up and move, now."

"Oh, you're here are you? Come on then, let's go and break the news to a budding young sportsman that he might never score another touchdown." He blinked a couple of times in order to readjust his eyes to the light and then dragged himself lazily out of his chair. Walking straight past her, he left his office before she had a chance to move.

She jogged quickly, and with as much dignity as she could possibly manage in her high heels, after him and managed to catch up with him with ease. She pursed her lips tightly and obtained a demure expression as they presumably approached the patient's room in order to remain professional, even though inside she was absolutely furious with him. Without a word, adopting a stony silence, she followed him in to the private room, where she luckily didn't realise House was also meeting the patient for the first time. She checked the notes left at the end of his bed to make sure she got his name right then plastered on her most convincing fake sympathetic and caring smile as she addressed him. "Hello Mr. Ward - I'm Dr. Cuddy, I'm Dean of Medicine here at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. I know your regular doctors have informed you about the procedure we'd like to perform on you, but I have to let you know that it does carry a lot of risks. There is a chance you could end up paralysed for the rest of your life. The procedure should take no longer than three hours and you'll be put under general anaesthetic for the duration. Providing everything goes according to plan and the surgery was a success, everything should go back to normal pretty soon. But considering all the risks that the operation presents, are you sure you want to go ahead?"

The patient, Ted Ward, was young, athletically built and had some sort of distinct charm about him that he even managed to pull off whilst lying sick in a hospital bed. He gave her a cheeky grin even though his eyes told her that he was not as cock sure of all of this as he was pretending to be, presumably for her benefit. "I couldn't feel any safer if I'm in your hands." And he looked her up and down approvingly, clearly trying to convince himself that everything was fine, nothing to get overly stressed about, and flirting with her to prove it.

Feeling rather flattered and pleased with herself because she knew that would annoy House even considering that he was so angry that she had a boyfriend, she reciprocated, but very subtly of course. Her eyes flashed at him as a mischievous smile played across her lips. "Unfortunately, I won't be the one performing the surgery, that's not my area, but I'll make sure you're in the hands of our best surgeons." She then handed over the forms he was required to sign for the procedure to go ahead and took a pen for him to use out of her breast pocket.

"What kind of doctor are you then?" He took the form and pen from her hands but didn't take his eyes off her at all as he signed his name and handed them back.

"I'm an endocrinologist. I deal with the hormone system of the body." Tucking the pen back into her breast pocket she consciously became aware of where she was drawing his attention to and where he was looking and she tried not to cringe. She hid her face as she pretended to busy herself with the copious sheets of paper in her arms that would have to be verified before the surgery could go ahead.

He watched her, aware that he'd been marginally too obvious in his staring so decided to tone down slightly and go for some careful flattery and compliments. At the end of the day, he was going in for possibly life changing surgery in a while, and that could leave him wheelchair bound and unable to do anything for himself for the rest of his life so he knew he might as well have a little fun and flirt a little while he still could. "Well you're certainly good with hormones; you've got me filled with testosterone."

At this point House, who had remained unusually silent during the whole exchanged, decided enough was enough and that, being one of the worst pick up lines he'd possibly ever heard, was abruptly the end of the conversation. "Sorry to interrupt, but you might want to stop before you get together a surgical team. By the way, she isn't really an endocrinologist, I wouldn't get excited. She hasn't been a real doctor for as long as I can remember, she spends all her time behind a desk and lapping up the shit that the board's demand. For example, she's such a terrible doctor that she's just given you that form to sign and that very lengthy and extremely boring lecture for absolutely no reason. You haven't got a spinal cord abscess and you don't need the surgery." He moved closer to the patient, the look of intense concentration on his face as he did so. Since they had entered the room House had known there was something not right about this case. The patient was black – a very basic human fact of appearance that his minions forgot to mention. Either they forgot, didn't want him to know or didn't think it was relevant. Either way, he would inform them later how abysmal they were at doing their job and how their patient being black was actually the most vital piece of information about solving their case.

When she heard his words, Cuddy did a double take and attempted not to explode with anger. "Not a spinal cord abscess, how do you work that one out by just sitting there? Do you have x-ray vision and can look at his spinal cord without using imaging studies?" In fact, in reality she wanted to scream and shout and rage as much as she possibly could at him because if he was right this time and it wasn't a spinal cord abscess, the likelihood was that it was in fact something she didn't even need to give her permission for him to investigate or even treat, whatever he saw fit. Therefore her ruining her romantic weekend with her boyfriend and missing out on the bonding and family with her daughter was actually for no reason what so ever. But she knew it would be possibly one of the most irresponsible and unprofessional things she could ever have done and therefore temporarily restrained herself while there was someone else in the room.

"What is one of the only symptoms that is difficult to identify or even notice in black people? Oh, I'm sorry; I must be politically correct – African American people." But when House spoke it was with that voice where he was something; he was clearly distracted and he was slowly moving closer to the patient and examining intently.

"Dr. House, please don't play ridiculous guessing games and just tell the poor young man what's wrong with him." She knew her voice was becoming increasingly short, snappy and irate the longer they talked but she hoped the patient wasn't paying as much attention as he should be.

Completely ignoring his boss' comment as if she hadn't said anything at all, he continued and began addressing the patient directly as he pulled out his otoscope, using it as a light source to stare intently at his eyes. "Have you been to anyway hot or exotic in the last 6 months?"

The patient looked marginally startled by the interruption, and fumbled in the back of his mind for the answer to the question. "Erm, well, yes, I went to Egypt about a month ago. A couple of friends decided they wanted to see the pyramids and all that so I just tagged along for the ride. Has that made me sick?" It was obvious by the expression on his face that for some reason he was marginally more worried about that possibility than the possibility of being paralysed for life that the surgery presented. Presumably it was for the simple reason that he was worried that he'd done this to himself.

"You would have thought my team would have figured out what was wrong with him the moment they set eyes on him. You know, the clue is in the name. Mr. Ward, you have yellow fever. Can I see the palms of your hands please?" When Mr. Ward obliged, House took one look at them and turned to Cuddy. "You can cancel the surgery. Every single one of my fellows failed to notice that this man has jaundice – so his liver is failing. The final diagnostic requirement for yellow fever. I mean, I know it's harder to see in black people but it doesn't mean they should get a lower standard of care. But don't worry about it, I'll sort it out – I'll fire every single one of them for racial discrimination. Yes, even the black one." And then he made to leave the room, as the other two occupants looked as if they were completely stunned into silence.

Before House managed to leave the room however, Ted spoke up. "If I've got this, yellow fever thing, will I get better?" The strength was back in his voice again and it was clear he was trying to make up for his moment of fear and impress Cuddy again.

House shrugged his shoulders carelessly. "There is no cure, there isn't even a treatment. Once you get to the toxic phase, which trust me, you're already in, it's hit and miss whether you survive or not. You've just got to hope your body can manage to fight the infection. There's nothing more we can do." And with that he did leave, attempting to shut the door behind him if only for dramatic effect but found he couldn't, as his boss was squeezing out of the door behind him. He knew exactly what was coming next so he let out a huge sigh in preparation.

"If you'd even bothered to go and see the patient you would have spotted that hours ago, maybe even days ago. You wouldn't have needed to make me cancel my vacation to sign off a procedure that you've decided he no longer needs, and you wouldn't have needed to put him through major surgery when you found absolutely nothing." Cuddy's voice was shrill and infuriated – her hands were almost shaking with anger. He'd put her through hell this weekend and ruined one of the first things that had made her happy in a long time because he was an arrogant and interfering son of a bitch.

"And Dr. Cuddy, if you weren't having doubts about your relationship you never would have walked away from a weekend with him whenever I told you. That's life." And he walked straight down the corridor and in to his office, locking the door behind him to ensure she couldn't follow him. But what she found was, she'd usually find a way to get in, and pursue the argument, but now she didn't want to. She just wanted to be as far away from him as possible.

* * *

><p>It wasn't intentional, but when she walked through her front door that evening, she slammed it behind her. She still had anger seething through her body and as much as she tried not to think about him – what he'd done and all he'd said – everything was just going round and round in circles in her mind. She hated him for it. She hated him for getting so deeply under her skin and she hated herself for letting him do it. Because what was worse, she knew she had something good with Lucas, something that could be amazing, but she was letting him intrude. And there was only so much Lucas would, and should, take. She dropped her hand bag carelessly by the front door and kicked off her shoes. Then she walked towards the living room where she could here Lucas was playing with Rachel.<p>

Lucas smiled upon seeing her walk in the door. He set Rachel carefully down on the floor and walked over to give her a kiss. "You seem stressed and up tight – what's happened? Or should I say, what did House do?"

It seemed like just another nail in the coffin for her. She knew he hadn't done it intentionally, in fact she was pretty sure he'd done it to make her feel better, to know that he knew her well enough to know what was wrong straight away, but it was that fact that he immediately jumped to House being the problem showed her really how much influence and input he had on their relationship. But instead of saying all that, she gave Lucas a weak smile. "Do you really want the list? The reason he told me I had to come back was completely invalid anyway, which he would have known before we came home had he bothered to do what every normal doctor does and visit his patients. He then humiliated me in front of said patient when he did bother to go and see him. And on top of all that, he knows about us." The whole explanation came out slightly faster than usual but she flopped down on to the sofa once she had finished, thoroughly exhausted and in short, sick of all the stress House caused her.

"Okay okay, let's take this one thing at a time. First of all, calm down. I know it's stressful and I know he makes you upset and angry but I can loosen you up as soon as little Rachel goes to bed. But until then, you're going to take deep breaths and be calm." He sat down next to her on the sofa and put his hand on her knee but smiled slightly so she knew he wasn't actually being patronising, he was only winding her up. "I know it's crappy that we had to come home, but hey, we had a good time anyway and we're home now, there's nothing we can do about it. And we can still make the most of the weekend because there's still the rest of tonight, and even if you have to go in tomorrow, you've booked the day off so no one's going to object if you spend the morning with me. Also, when does he ever not humiliate you in front of a patient? So what. If that's what makes him feel better about himself then let him do it. It doesn't hurt you – you're a damn good doctor, and you're damn good at what you do, everyone knows that. So let him say what he likes. And if he knows about us… It's too late now isn't it, there's nothing we can do about that either. But does that mean we can have sex on your desk if I'm no longer a secret?" He gave her a cheeky grin but he was half serious, even though he was mainly trying to lighten her spirits.

No matter how miserable, tired and furious she felt, she couldn't keep the smile off her face and she punched him playfully in the arm. "We are not having sex on my desk, okay? I'm a respected woman in that hospital and if anyone caught us I'd never hear the end of it. Besides, he doesn't know it's you, he just knows there's someone."

"I love how out of every point I made, you seemed to think that was the most pressing one. But you do know, he is going to find out some day. You can't hide me forever, especially if we're going move in together and get married and have another baby. I mean, you might even get away with the first two but I think the most observant person we know is going to notice if you turn up to work with a pregnancy bump." It wasn't that he was getting bored, or resenting being the secret, he just didn't want her deluded in to thinking that House would never find out they were dating. Because that would only result in her illusions being shattered and her getting hurt and that was the last thing he wanted. He just wanted to make her aware of and prepared for the future because he wanted their future to be together and that wasn't something they were going to be able to hide forever.

"And I love how you're just assuming I want to move in with you, marry you and have more children with you." She teased him, feeling in much better spirits than she did when she came in, but the worry was still plaguing her. "I know he's going to find out at some point, I just don't want him to find out yet because I don't think he's ready. He finds it difficult to make connections with people as it is then to find out the woman he fantasised about is dating one of the only people in the last millennium that he managed to sustain, dare I say it, a friendship with… That might crush him. And I don't want to do that."

His hand still on her knee, he put his other arm around her shoulders and pulled her in close to lay her head on his chest. "I know, and neither do I particularly. But I just want you to remember that it might not go any smoother, no matter how long you leave it. Because if you're waiting for the day that you know he's going to be okay with it, you're going to be waiting for a very long time. Because he's never going to be okay with it, because he wants you for himself."

Sometimes she hated how well he could read her, but other times it was a real blessing. He was exactly right – that was exactly what she wanted. But what he didn't know was that she didn't know if she was ready for him to know yet. She knew that dating Lucas would be as close to a betrayal as House would ever admit, and she knew that once he found out, any relationship there ever had been or could ever be would be well and truly dead. Even though she had Lucas now and she would never dream of putting herself through the guilt that she was still living with since kissing him, again, but after years of foreplay she wasn't quite sure she could kill the fantasy. She wasn't quite sure she was ready for him to hate her as much as he would. But that was something she kept to herself. "I know, I know. Just, give it a little longer, I don't want to rush in to it and regret it because it was too quick…"

"I'm not pushing you to tell him, I just don't want you to delude yourself. He's going to have to know at some point, unless you plan on getting rid of me." He didn't know why, but he was still slightly insecure about that subject so as soon as he touched on it, he regretted it and tried to steer conversation in a totally different direction as soon as feasibly possible. Part of his insecurity he knew was down to the fact that he was a slightly immature and socially inept private investigator with no real ambitions or no real success in life, and she was a gorgeous and desirable dean of medicine at a wealthy hospital who could have had probably any red blooded man she wanted. And he couldn't help but wonder why, out of all those red blooded men, did she choose him? He also knew it was marginally depressing and pathetic that he couldn't even answer that himself, but he knew she spent her days surrounded by influential and charming doctors and executives, and some, namely House, were falling over themselves to date her, yet she chose him. It didn't make any sense to him. So instead he presented her with a change of subject that she couldn't refuse. "Now, if you're refusing to have sex on your desk, I think I might have to remind you why you wouldn't say no… So go and put Rachel to bed."

Obediently, for a change, she got up from the sofa and squealed in surprise when she felt him smack her ass playfully.


	10. Chapter 10

**Hey guys, another update! Thanks again for the reviews, you honestly don't know how much I appreciate them. After this chapter, I have one and half chapters already written so I'm going to start writing to update, so please keep the reviews coming - it's really motivation to know people are enjoying the story enough to review, and your feedback is really helpful.**

**Also, I'm hoping this one might be a bit more satisfying than some of the more Luddy-filled chapters, even though it's quite a bit shorter :(**

**I really hope you enjoy it, and don't forget to leave a review on your way out. Loveeeee xxxxxx**

**X**

Even though he was the last person Cuddy wanted to see, the next morning she found herself looking for House. Although, by the time she did end up looking for him it was closer to lunch time, as Lucas had stuck to his promise of keeping her in bed all morning. He only actually reluctantly let her leave when he got a phone call from a potential client about a job, and since she was going in to work that day anyway, he agreed to take it. The nanny came and picked Rachel up, deciding to wrap her up warm and take her to the park for one of the last times this year before it got too cold.

It was only when she got in to work did she remember that House, in all the drama of the previous evening, had actually solved his case, and therefore she needed to issue him with a new one or he'd just spend as long as he possibly could avoiding work. That caused a familiar sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach but this time it was more prominent than ever, and it was usually the feeling she got before coming up against the board, not the feeling she got when having to face House. But if anything, Lucas had reminded her last night how lucky she was to have him. She partially suspected this reminder was staged on purpose, as she did notice him falter and quickly change the subject when he mentioned her getting rid of him, but she didn't mind. She didn't want to insult his masculinity by mentioning the fact that he might be insecure but at the same time she wanted to reassure him that he had no reason to be insecure – even though, in reality, that wasn't strictly true given what had already accidentally happened between her and House.

Thinking about that in particular made her very uncomfortable and extremely guilty so in order to put it from her mind, she flipped through her inbox and pulled out a letter she had received only a couple of days before from the midst of the papers. It was pertaining to someone who wanted Dr. House's help and expertise in diagnosing unknown illnesses. She got about five letters of the same kind a week, but the only reason this one hadn't been tossed straight into the trash can like the rest of them was because this one actually looked extremely interesting, and was sure to get House's attention. Not to mention keep him busy for at least a week, if not more.

She picked it up and left her office with it, feeling increasingly sick and nervous with every step she took. What was even worse was the fact that it was extremely likely his team would be in the office too, so she would have to stay cool and calm whilst enduring his taunting jibes. The elevator had never seemed to move so quickly and when she stepped out of it on to the third floor, she could see his office straight away. She could see his team too, but infuriatingly enough, she couldn't see him. And right now, with the mood she was in, she really didn't want to have to wander around the hospital and look in every janitor's closet in case he was hiding from her in there.

Storming in to his outer office, she looked from one fellow to the other and this time not bothering to hide her annoyance, because if he'd gone absent without leave again she had every right to be furious. "Have any of you seen House? Even by his standards, he should be in by now." Her voice was quite demanding, even though she hadn't intended it that way.

Both male members of staff completely ignored her and they hadn't even flinched when she entered the room, because they both knew much better to rat out their boss when he was hiding from his boss - he would make their lives hell if they did. However, Thirteen at least had the courtesy to answer her, even if the answer wasn't very helpful. "He said he was going out and he'd be back sometime before you came looking for him. I guess he was wrong."

Cuddy tutted and made to storm out of the office in a moment of forgetting basic polite mannerisms, but when she remembered them, she quickly turned around and obeyed them. "Thank you." But instead of going back down to her own office and giving up like she really wanted to, she stalked down the corridor and walked straight in to Wilson's office without even knocking. "Do you know where he is?"

Any other person would have literally jumped out of their seat at the force that she entered the room without warning with, but Wilson was used to it because House never knocked and tended to walk around with the grace of a bull in a china shop. However, he did do a double take and blink a number of times in surprise when he saw the person standing in his office demanding to talk to him wasn't actually House, but in fact Cuddy. "I assume its House you're talking about, and if that's the case, I can't answer you because I don't know."

She paced the room for a couple of seconds, still highly agitated, but when she realised that if Wilson didn't actually know where he was, she couldn't go and find him to yell at him, and searching for him was going to take forever because he could be anywhere and he was very practised in hiding from her, so she might as well sit down. She did so, putting her head in her hands and sweeping them through her hair.

He couldn't help thinking that she even managed to be elegant when he could tell she was absolutely furious. However he, unlike Lucas, was not afraid of her so wasn't worried about opening his mouth and actually talking to her, even when she was this harassed and stressed out. He also assumed from the fact that she was here right now rather than away on her vacation with Rachel like she was supposed to be, that House had done something to screw that up and she'd had to postpone it or cancel it all together. "Lisa, I don't know how you can complain. You exactly what he's like, and it's taken him a lot of guts to admit to himself he likes you, even if he won't admit it to anyone else. And that isn't just going to go away – he's going to keep pursuing it because that's who he is."

Even though she felt slightly comforted by the fact that he obviously hadn't yet been told about the argument, and the fact that she already had a boyfriend, she was still annoyed. "I can't complain because I know what he's like? I may know what he's like Wilson but that doesn't mean its right, and it doesn't mean I should have to put up with it. How many times do I have to say that I've moved on and I don't want him before it'll sink in to one of your heads?"

"I can't speak for him, but I know you can say it as many times as you want, I'm never going to believe you. This tension has been building up from the day you met and things like that don't just go away – they don't just disappear or you don't just lose them like that. I'm not asking you to commit to marry him, I'm only asking you to give him a chance and waste a couple hours of your life seeing whether he really has changed, and whether you two really do have a chance." He wasn't quite sure why he was still trying again because part of him knew that if it hadn't worked the first two times that it was unlikely to be third time lucky.

Regardless of knowing she was getting irrationally angry because at the moment House and their relationship was a very sensitive subject, she resisted the urge to slap him. "You know what, forget it. I don't want to, or need to, listen to another lecture about him from you. Not right now, not today." She shook her head and got up, walking straight back out the office again and shutting the door behind her with perhaps a little bit more force than she had intended to.

* * *

><p>It certainly wasn't the first time he'd been inside her house; in fact, it wasn't even the first time he'd been inside her house without her permission. However this time, he seemed much more sensitive to the tiny little details, and of course the signs that a man spent long periods of time here – after shave in the bathroom, boxers and socks in the drawers, more than one toothbrush in the cup by the sink. Everywhere he looked there was a memory of the fact that someone had got in before him, and it took all his self control not to smash all those things. Her house still smelled of her; it was now just a mixture of her, baby puke and a male scent that he was sure he recognised but couldn't place.<p>

As he shuffled back in to the hall where the wireless telephone stood, he saw a light flashing on the docking station. Seen as curiosity only killed cats, he let his get the better of him and took a closer look, only to see it was notifying him that there was a message on the answer phone. If it wasn't enough that he'd broken in to her house without her permission, or even her knowledge, he seemed to think he had a right to listen to her answer phone messages before she did too. He wasn't quite sure how to use her answer machine but he took an educated guess and presumed he was right when an automated female voice began speaking to him.

"You have one new message. First new message left today at 14:32pm."

And then there came a male voice – at first he was completely at sea about who it belonged to but the moment he realised, he knew it all suddenly made sense.

"Hey babe, I can imagine you will have probably had a stressful day at work today, well, more stressful than normal anyway, so I thought I might bring a takeout home with me to save either of us having to cook? It's fine if you don't want one, just let me know. By the time I'm finished you'll probably have already put Rachel to bed, so give her my love. See you later."

It felt like there was a cold hard fist clasped around his heart, and hearing a familiar voice on her answer phone was more painful than he ever imagined it to be. Lucas was as close to a friend as he could call anyone – other than Wilson, but Wilson was just an enabler – and he was dating the woman that he had been in love with for probably over twenty years. What was even worse was, Lucas knew he was in love with her; they'd discussed it during one of those endless conversations that Lucas had charged him for.

He had a sudden urge to grab something, anything, and throw it against a wall so he shattered it in to a million pieces. Pain shot down his leg in a magnitude he hadn't felt for a long time, so much so that it was almost crippling and as it began to shake and collapse under him, he managed to stumble in to the living room and collapse on the couch. He gripped his cane so hard that his knuckles went white and in an attempt to distract himself from the leg pain he bit his lip so hard he drew blood. It made him even more angry that he'd let her get so far under his skin that in one split second she had the power to take him back that place in his head that he was in before all the rehab, before Mayfield. Before getting clean. And there was only one thought in the front of his mind at that one moment – he needed his vicodin.

He'd never been strong enough, or had enough faith in the system to believe he'd really come off drugs, properly. And because of that, he hadn't got rid of all his vicodin. There was still some left in his flat, hidden in a hole he'd hollowed out of his own wall and then hung a mirror in front of. The only think that was standing in the way of him and going back a year, undoing all the good that had been done in the last few months, was his own willpower. Because right now there was no one here to stop him getting back on his motorbike the moment his leg allowed him, going straight back to his apartment, downing half the bottle of pills in one go and passing out cold on his bathroom floor.

Then he remembered the fantasy he had. He remembered the last time he took vicodin and the dream he created for himself because he wanted to believe it was true. She was his saviour – rescuing him from the rock bottom and bringing him back to the surface, helping him float. And he had some sort of feeling that that wasn't likely to happen in reality this time if he went back on the pills. Lucas didn't necessarily mean he'd lost her forever – Lucas was as much of a twat as he was at times, they were bound to break up sooner or later. He was too much of an immature, selfish man child to be the boyfriend of a responsible single mother, dean of medicine at a major hospital and the sexiest ball breaker medicine had ever seen. That's what he wanted to tell himself anyway. But he knew that if he took the pills, he _would _lose her forever. There would be no going back because she wouldn't scrape him off the floor again this time, even if last time she hadn't actually done it in the way he'd imagined.

He knew he was asking himself what would possibly be the hardest question of his life. Would he rather live without pain, or live without the possibility of living with the woman of his dreams? Because hoping to win her over, dare he say it, win her heart, would not only leave him open to physical pain. It would leave him open and vulnerable to the emotional and mental pain he experienced when he heard Lucas' voice on the answer machine – a type of pain he hadn't felt since Stacy left, and then she came back in to his life, married to someone else. The feelings he had towards Mark then were incomparable to those he felt about Lucas now, probably because he'd never seen Mark's actions as a personal betrayal. Mark never had any loyalty to him, supposedly Lucas had.

House had never been the sort of person who dealt with pain rationally. It was always his main priority – he did whatever he had to do to avoid any unnecessary pain because he was plagued with it every day of his life. And he wasn't quite sure he was ready to commit himself to feeling like that every time he saw her, knowing she went to bed with another man every night. But he was also just about rational enough to know that if he took the pills now, next time he saw her, spoke to her, took in her smell, he'd regret it.

So it was on that knowledge that he made his decision. For once, he decided to heed Wilson's advice and do what he'd been told to do all along. He was going to talk to her. But he was going to talk to Wilson first, to confirm he was doing the right thing. Because for the first time in a long time, he was actually being grown up and making a mature decision. He was actually accepting that something was extremely important and he knew, he couldn't mess this up. He wanted to do the right thing. He wanted to do whatever he possibly could to convince her that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

* * *

><p>Wilson wasn't remotely surprised, in fact, he didn't even look up, when, for the second time that day, someone stormed in to his office without warning and with an urgency like the world was ending. However this time when he eventually did look to see the identity of his companion, he was relieved to see it was the more familiar sight of his best friend. Sighing, he set his pen back down on his desk, knowing it was be completely pointless to attempt to do any paperwork with House in the room, because House was in the room to talk about something and would not stand for Wilson's attention to be on anything but him. He let out a resigned sigh and raised his eyebrows at his best friend. "Was there anything in particular you wanted or do you just want to disturb me?"<p>

House remained silent for a moment longer, as if he was thinking hard about something, then sat down on the sofa, still in complete silence. It was almost another minute before he actually spoke. "As amusing and entertaining as it is to just distract you for no particular reason other than you have a ton of work to do is, I actually need your advice."

Even though he tried extremely hard, Wilson could quite hide the complete and utter shock in his voice. "You're actually asking for my help? And you're not winding me up?" As quickly as the shock had appeared, it was replaced with a dark and almost accusing suspicion.

"No, I'm not actually! Yes, I actually want your help!" House was highly affronted and offended by the accusation because it took him a lot of humility to ask for help from anyone. However, he hoped an explanation would sober him up a bit and actually make him more inclined to help, quickly. "It's about Cuddy. I think I'm going to talk to her."

If he was to get any answer at all, that was not the one that Wilson was expecting – at least, not when House sounded so deadly serious. He knew this time he had to hide his surprise, as any inkling of shock might spook him and Wilson did not want to do anything that might make him change his mind. Instead, he made sure his voice was calm and encouraging. "Okay, well, what's brought this on? Why do you suddenly want to talk to her now when you've been spending the last god knows how long telling me you've got nothing to talk to her about?"

"She's with someone else. Someone else beat me to it, that and the fact that we had an argument and it made me realise that she wasn't going to wait forever for me to be a grown up about that, because she's already given up waiting." Then, he looked up at his best friend and masked the pain in his eyes extremely well, but still found it hard to say the sentence with much strength and conviction in his voice. "She's dating Lucas."

Wilson found it extremely difficult not to let his jaw drop in shock. "Lucas, as in, Lucas Douglas, the private investigator? Lucas Douglas, the man who practically stalked her for almost a month? Lucas Douglas, the only person other than me that you probably would call a friend?"

House pulled a face at him, making it clear that he was not impressed in the slightest by the reaction he got. "Do you mind not repeating that over and over again? Every time I hear his name I get the almost irrepressible need to punch him."

"Oh, right, sorry. Well, if I didn't think it would piss Cuddy off even more than you've already managed to – and yes, I know that you've managed to because she was in here ranting at me about you when you went absent without leave this morning which, by the way, you never actually told me the truth about where you went but we'll discuss that later – I'd suggest you go and do just that. It would make you feel better at least. But instead, you need to vent your anger in another, more healthy way. And you also need to not panic because they won't last. He's too simple and not enough of a challenge – she'll get bored of him following her around like a love sick puppy sooner rather than later, but when that time comes you have to play it delicately. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it anyway." And Wilson said all of this extremely was extremely bizarre – in the back of his mind he was well aware that he was talking to a man his own age, well, if he was honest, probably older than his own age, yet he felt like he was coaching a son on how to go about winning over a girl he liked the look of in the playground. He knew that House and Cuddy had never really grown up from their university days together – that's where their relationship had started and it had set the foundations for everything in years to come.

House remained silent for a couple of seconds, taking in Wilson's advice but then couldn't resist picking up on exactly the same thing that had crossed his best friend's mind. "Remind me why you never had kids again? We're not twelve and she isn't some girl in the playground with pigtails and ankle socks that I want to get to notice me. We work together, and worst of all, she's my boss, and probably the only Dean of Medicine in the entire state that would actually hire me and let me do exactly what I want to do. So I don't think pissing her office by treating her like a school girl is a good idea. I'm just going to be an adult, and go and talk to her." He nodded, as if confirming his actions to himself, then got up from the sofa to leave. He nodded in Wilson's direction to thank him too, but only got as far as putting his hand on the door handle before his companion started to speak.

"House, are you okay?" Even though he knew what answer he was going to get to the question, Wilson asked anyway. For the first time since House had left Mayfield, Wilson was really worried. He'd kept away from the pills so far, but it was fantasizing about her that forced him in to rehab in the first place, and there was a very real possibility and danger that this could force him back on to the drugs to ease the pain. He knew that House would never admit it to him, but he hoped he'd be able to work out the truth from his body language.

"Me? I'm fine, I'm absolutely ecstatic. I've got a new game to play – he may have got in there first, but I'm playing the long game, and I'm going to win in the end." Making sure he looked extremely self satisfied, confident and as close to content as he ever was, even though he didn't actually feel it, House was trying to keep Wilson off his back - though he couldn't quite meet his eyes. However, he looked up slightly and caught a glimpse of the extremely solemn and anxious look on Wilson's face and felt obliged not to ignore it. He took a deep and over exaggerated sigh, then pulled a mock serious face. "Wilson, I'm fine. I'm not back on the drugs, nor am I going back on the drugs. And you know how I know that? Because I thought about it. When I found out it was Lucas, I really considered it. I asked myself why the hell I'm still bothering staying clean and proving to her that I am the man she wants. I also asked myself whether I'm really prepared to put myself through as much emotional pain as this is going to cause me, as well as the physical pain of not taking the drugs, rather than being completely devoid of any sort of pain. And all by myself, I decided that I didn't want to take the pills. Because, in fact, I've waited twenty years for this chance with her and its going to be bloody hard work but I will do my very best. At the end of the day, may the best man win, but I will have absolutely no chance if I go back on the vicodin. And that's the best assurance that I can give you."

Wilson simply nodded, as an indication that House was dismissed from the room, again like a father talking to his son. But as the door shut behind him, Wilson marvelled about how much the man that had just stood in front of him and given him a rational explanation for staying off the drugs had changed. He gave an explanation that involved the feelings of somebody else and he seemed completely dedicated to winning Cuddy's affections. It didn't sound like it would be quite in the most gentlemanly way possible, granted, but that was just House through and through. Wilson truly couldn't believe what Mayfield seemed to have done to him – the last time he had seen House so serious about anything in his life, he had been trying to win his boss over under the premises of a hallucination. Before hand, he wouldn't have believed it possible, but he really did seem like a changed man, in all the ways he needed to be. Well, most of them at least.

* * *

><p><strong>Syd, you did ask for Huddy angst ok... XD<strong>


	11. Chapter 11

**Hey guys! Thank you again so much for all the reviews - they've been coming in dribs and drabs for the last couple of days an each time I get a new one it makes me smile incessantly. So yes, thank you!**

**I just want to apologise; I really love the suggestions you guys have given me as to where to take the new part of the story, but I had already written this chapter and have already written 90% of the next chapter during NaNoWriMo, so it'd be really difficult to worm your ideas in under the circumstances :( But your opinions are much appreciated and hopefully I will be able to be much more proactive with them after Chapter 12 because then I'll be writing as we go along.**

**I really hope you enjoy this chapter; we really are approaching a very important plot point which I'm excited about XD But also your feedback is great - I was really nervous writing this bit and when proof-reading it, because a certain character in this chapter I've never really written before so I hope I've got his characterization right..! Anyway, I'll sssh now and let you get on reading. I really hope you like and I'll really love you if you leave me a review when you're finished. Lovee xxxxxx**

**P.S. HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY EVERYONE!**

**XI**

For the first time in a long time, the lights were dimmed in the living room, the television was on, Rachel was upstairs asleep in her cot, the baby monitor was silent, and Cuddy was curled up on the sofa in her pyjamas and bare feet with a glass of red wine in her hand. In fact, even more surprisingly, the situation had been the same for almost the past two hours. After the excitement of the past couple of days, Rachel slept almost the moment she put her down, Lucas was at work and House was actually avoiding her because he knew the next time they came face to face she'd give him a new case to work on. She hadn't bothered to cook because she didn't know when Lucas would be home and didn't want to eat without him, so she'd even treated herself to a couple of chocolates and a slice of the chocolate fudge cake from the bakery down the road that was absolutely to die for. For the first time in a long time, Lisa Cuddy was calm, relaxed, content and happy.

She was so relaxed that she hadn't even noticed the front door open and Lucas let himself in. He could hear the television was quiet so he assumed that meant Rachel was in bed, so he crept quietly in to the living room. "Hey gorgeous, how was your day?" However, the end of his sentence was slightly obscured by a very large yawn which he attempted to quickly stifle.

"Oh, I didn't hear you come in!" She answered with surprise, but shuffled up on the sofa so he could sit down too because he looked absolutely exhausted. "It was… annoyingly uneventful. You would have thought after giving up our vacation weekend, something dramatic would at least have the decency to happen and make it worth it? But no. House spent all day avoiding me because he solved his case last night and knows I need to give him another one. And the air conditioning broke in the gynaecology ward, and maintenance took their time to fix it so I had to go and sort them out with temporary fans. And since nothing else happened I took the once in a lifetime opportunity and came home early, so I've been back for a couple of hours. How about yours?"

Lucas smiled as he slipped down on to the sofa next to her and lifted her feet on to his knee so he could play with them attentively. "Oh, nothing really, the client who called me out today is a total prat. I'm sure he has me on speed dial – he calls me every other month to tail his wife for twelve hours solid because he's convinced she's cheating on him, then when I come back and tell him she did nothing untoward and tell him the amount I'm going to send him an invoice for he decides it's not worth paying that much and gives up the crusade for a couple of months, then starts all over again. But hey, if you got home early, you could have called me, I would have come home early too. I was contracted for twelve hours but she went back home to him after nine so it was a waste of time. I just decided to do the extra three hours anyway because I thought you'd still be at work and he wouldn't pay me for work I didn't do."

"Oh, sorry sweetheart, I thought you'd be busy. I don't like calling you when you're at work in case you're like, hiding from someone or something and I reveal your position by calling you at the wrong time!" She giggled to herself at the thought of him hiding behind a lamp post from someone as he trailed them around the streets of Trenton.

"Do you really think I'm an idiot? I always have my cell phone on silent when I'm working!" Smacking her foot playfully, he tickled the bottom until she giggled and squirmed and begged for mercy, just to punish her for assuming he was stupid enough to make an amateur mistake like that. "Anyway, I was expecting your call, so it's not like I would have been unprepared. I left you a message on the answer machine."

After recovering from her giggling fit whilst trying not to spill the glass of wine in her hand on the cream carpet, Cuddy processed what he said and looked highly confused. "You left a message on the answer machine? That's weird… There wasn't one there when I got in. The light wasn't flashing but I always check anyway, just in case, and I had no unread messages. When did you leave it?"

"About lunch time, when I gave myself a lunch break. I was just asking if you wanted me to bring a takeout home with me because we've had a long weekend and you've been at work and I didn't think you'd really be in the mood to cook." Lucas continued massaging her feet slowly but firmly in order to make sure she didn't get stressed – because she was prone to getting stressed about the smallest things. "Don't worry about it, if you do want one, we'll just order one to deliver. What do you want, pizza? Chinese? Curry?"

However, it was clear although she was enjoying the foot massage very much, it wasn't stopping her from getting stressed out. She shook her head at him, signalling him to stop for a second, and she was obviously very distracted and thinking something through slowly in her head. "I went to his office just after lunch and he wasn't there, and Wilson knew nothing about the argument we'd had or where he was. That means he either didn't speak to Wilson at all, or he'd gone somewhere the Wilson wouldn't approve of. He obviously wasn't just hiding from me because Wilson wouldn't disapprove of that – he's used to it." She it was almost like she was working through a problem methodically using assumptions, much like House did – she seemed to be attempting to use his own tricks against him. "Wilson is rubbish at lying, especially to me, and I really wasn't that distracted that I wouldn't have noticed this morning, so he must've known absolutely nothing at all. So if he didn't speak to Wilson he must have been out all morning, well, between him arriving at the hospital and me arriving." She looked up in shock and worry at Lucas with almost a dawning comprehension on her face, and she really didn't like what she was realising. "He was here. That's why I couldn't find him anywhere, and why Wilson didn't have a clue what was going on – House would never tell him if he was going to break in to my house illegally, because Wilson has spent the last god knows how long trying to convince me that House is a changed man, and by doing that he'd only prove that I was right all along so Wilson would kill him. But it's the only explanation – it's something he'd do and after last night, it's definitely something he was in the frame of mind to do, and it explains why…" And then she stopped talking in mid sentence and pulled up foot out of his grasp, got up, put her glass of wine down and ran out in to the hallway as if she'd been struck by another idea.

"Lisa, for God's sake will you calm down?" Sighing, he got up and followed her and resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. He was much calmer – he knew how exceptionally prone to overreacting to things she was. When he stepped in to the large hall way, he found her on her knees at the spindly table on which the telephone stood, fiddling around the answer machine. He opened his mouth to speak again but before he got to say anything, she gestured for him to be quiet by pressing her finger to her lips, then pointed to the box she had in her hand. He fell silent obediently and waited slightly impatiently for what he was supposed to be listening to.

An automated female voice broke the silence. "You have no new messages. You have one saved message. First saved message left today at 14:32pm."

Then a slightly distorted but definitely recognizable recording of Lucas' voice began playing. "Hey babe, I can imagine you will have probably had a stressful day at work today, well, more stressful than normal anyway, so I thought I might bring a takeout home with me to save either of us having to cook? It's fine if you don't want one, just let me know. By the time I'm finished you'll probably have already put Rachel to bed, so give her my love. See you later."

Cuddy cut the call off without deleting the message, just as House must have done, and gave Lucas a panicked look. "I told you. He knows; it must have been him. Either that or someone we _don't _know broke in to the house and didn't take anything, and had the courtesy to leave everything where it was, or at least put it back when they were done, after listening to our answer machine messages."

Holding out his hand to her, Lucas helped her up from her sitting position, put his arm around her waist gently but firmly in an attempt to calm her down, and steered her back towards the sofa in the living room where he sat her down. It pained him to say that actually, it sounded like she was right, and it also sounded exactly like he sort of thing House would do – it was extremely insane and convoluted. "Look Lisa, if you're right and he does know, well he's had a chance to come and confront you about it, hasn't he, and he's not usually one to bide his time, and he hasn't done it yet. So maybe he's just not going to do it at all. Maybe he might actually respect me enough, even if he doesn't respect you enough, to leave us alone and accept that some people might just have a right to be left alone to be happy. And I know it doesn't sound like him but at the end of the day, Wilson has been telling you he's changed. So maybe he has." He spoke to her in a calming voice as he sat back down next to her; but it was with much more conviction than he felt, and he was must more concerned than he was letting on.

* * *

><p>The next day, she put slightly more make up on than usual, to hide her red eyes and the bags underneath them. Despite how much Lucas had attempted to calm her down, and how successful he had actually been, because he knew her well enough to know exactly what to say to her when she was stressed out, she still didn't sleep very well. Because not only was she scared about his possible reaction to finding out she was dating Lucas, someone he thought was loyal to him, but she was also scared of what he'd say to Lucas. She was scared that in a fit of anger or bitterness, he'd accidentally on purpose let it slip about their kiss. That burden of guilt, that weight that she'd been feeling in the pit of her stomach since it happened, had redoubled, quadrupled even, and she once again had a permanent feeling of nausea.<p>

She left for work before Lucas woke up, leaving him a note on the kitchen bench, because she didn't want to face him. She felt like she was lying to him every minute of every day again, even if it was only by omission. She was also plagued with her own self hatred – she kept punishing herself, because the fact remained that the guilt had previously subsided when she was comforted by the fact that there was no reason that Lucas should ever find out about her infidelity, and it had only returned when that possibility became real. Her office provided one of the only remaining comforts to her – at work she was the boss, and she'd got there by a mixture of hard work and being extremely good at what she did. She has earned that office and the respect from her employees and colleagues that came along with it. It was one thing she hadn't screwed up at least.

However, she had to leave the sanctity of her office and instead go in search of the last person she wanted to see right now, because she knew that was her job. Her mind was so preoccupied as she left her office and the clinic that she wasn't watching where she was going, and she almost walked straight in to him, as he entered the building for the day. She had the file she intended to give him in her hand, so she held it out for him to take. "Ah, Dr. House, I was just about to come looking for you. Seen as you seem to be getting through your cases at a remarkable speed lately, I thought you might like another one to keep you busy." When he didn't take the file out of her hand, she pushed it further in his direction.

House lifted the rim of his flat cap so he could look her in the eye, but actually found it remarkably easy to act like absolutely nothing had happened and like he hadn't found out anything of significance at all. He completely ignored her repeated gestures for him to take the file in her hand off her, and instead busied himself taking his gloves off and pushing them rather forcibly in to his pockets. "And what on earth would make you think that Dr. Cuddy. The holiday season is approaching us, don't you have small dying children on cancer wards to comfort rather than bothering me with petty, mundane things like work?"

"It may seem mundane to you, but seen as you're so concerned about me making people happy this holiday season, why don't you make somebody happy and save their life? Or in case I didn't make myself clear, you don't actually have a choice in the matter." She jabbed him rather fiercely in the arm with the blue file, still attempting to get him to take it off her. As they stood in such close proximity as if nothing at all had happened between them, it was like nothing had even changed and everything was just the way that it always was, yet even conversing with him was making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end – and not in a good way. It was almost as though she feel threatened by him, even though he'd done nothing to indicate she had anything to be scared of, past experience of him told her that things were never going to be this simple. She felt like he had a hold, a power over her, and she didn't like that, and she felt trapped by her own guilt and his knowledge of exactly what she'd done. And she was starting to get extremely claustrophobic.

"Oh, you're going to pull rank on me, are you?" To anyone else in the world watching in on this conversation, he knew not one of them, even Wilson, would be able to detect anything wrong or abnormal between the two of them. This was natural, this was how it always was. Except, it wasn't. There was something contrived about this conversation – her body language was tense and her unconscious mannerisms were conspicuous by their absence. Her mind was elsewhere – either that or she was thinking and over thinking their exchange far more than usual, far far more than was necessary. She wasn't relaxed. Whenever the game passed back and forth between them, it may not have always helped her stress levels, but she was always comfortable with it. Lisa Cuddy was a very self conscious person and wasn't always comfortable in her own skin; with who she was, and what she did. But on those very common occasions, she was comfortable – it was a role she had to play that she understood well, could play well, and enjoyed playing. It excited her. And now she wasn't comfortable or excited. She was anxious, but clearly trying to hide it. And least he could take comfort in the fact that he was a much better actor than her.

She had that paranoid feeling, she knew he was watching her. She knew he'd sensed that there was something not right about her today and he was latching on to every imperfection in order to figure out what it was that was bothering her but she tried to act like she hadn't noticed. Instead, she pushed on with the conversation. "Yes, I am going to pull rank on you. I'm your boss and you will do as I say. Now either you take this file off me or I go upstairs and give it to your team personally so you can't pretend for the next couple of hours that you haven't got a case." She raised her eyebrow questioningly at him, to see if he was going to take her up on the offer, and when he hadn't flinched within the space of twenty seconds, she simply turned her back on him and made her way towards the elevators without a word.

Hoping to call her bluff, he didn't react, but when she made no indication that she was going to stop, he followed her as quickly as his bum leg and his cane would allow him – which wasn't exceptionally fast, especially when wearing a thick coat and a scarf. However, the elevator took a while to arrive at the ground floor which gave him a chance to catch up with her, and slide in the same elevator as her. He stood silently by her side to begin with, but as it began to move, he leant towards her and stage whispered in her ear, ensuring everyone else entering the elevator could hear every word. "I hope you can still walk this morning, I'll be a bit more gentle next time." The words wanted to stick in his throat the moment he thought about how untrue they were, however, he managed to continue as if nothing was bothering him at all.

If looks could kill, she made sure she murdered him fifteen times over. She wasn't quite sure if that was a sneaky dig, and the pit of guilt made a particularly painful burn like acid in the pit of her stomach when she thought about it, but she tried desperately to tell herself that she was over thinking, and he was just trying to annoy and rile her just like he usually did. As the elevator reached the third floor, she stepped out of it, again without a word to him, and stalked towards his office.

"Oi! Come on, with the length of that skirt, you might as well not be wearing one at all? You call yourself professional? The only thing that could be called professional in reference to would be a professional hooker." He knew it was below the belt, especially considering he shouted it at her down a crowded corridor as he was lagging behind her significantly, but he was desperately trying to find something to stop her going in to his office – he didn't think it was too advisable that she should be enlightened of the fact that he'd 'borrowed' the games console from the children's ward and installed it in to the flat screen television from the doctor's lounge that he'd blackmailed her in to giving to him.

Upon hearing that, she span around immediately, a face of complete and utter disbelief coupled with slight amusement, which was actually quite a relief to her because amusement wasn't an emotion she was too used to feeling at the moment. "Oh, you really are unbelievable." With every sentence, she took a slow step back towards them until they met in the middle, not too far from the door of his outer office. "You don't think I know, you're just trying to make me angry? I mean, you could have picked a better insult than that, really. You're always happy about the length of my skirts – the shorter the better in your opinion, so don't act like it's suddenly a problem for you now. So there's obviously something in your office you don't want me to see. However, it might delight you to know, that if there's something you don't want me to see that badly then I don't want to know what it is, because then I might have to deal with it, and you. And God knows what shit you're going to make me sort out next." She paused for a second, quite shocked at herself as cursing was something she reserved for particular occasions - so it just proved how much he was screwing with her head at the moment. "So instead, you can take the case and stay out of my way, preferably for at least the rest of today. Which includes not doing anything ridiculously stupid." She pressed the navy blue file in to his chest, gave him a contemptuous but satisfied look, and walk straight past him, back thought the open doors of an elevator that people were just exiting, and let the doors close in front of her. However, as they did close and she knew she was out of his sight, her self-satisfied smirk faded and she returned to being the nervous wreck she had been ten minutes ago. It made it even worse that she still got a thrill and a buzz from arguing with him – the intellectual confrontation and the battle of wills was one of the reasons she didn't just fire him on the spot for total disrespect to patients, colleagues, authority and hospital protocol. But she hated that fact – it just reminded of why they'd ended up kissing, and that just made her think about how wonderful Lucas was to her and Rachel, and how ungrateful she must be to have hurt him like that.

House blinked a couple of times in slight shock after the exchange, but it only took him a couple of seconds to process the fact that she in fact was not going to search his office for what he was obviously hiding from her because she actually really did not want to know. He entered his office, still pondering about what was wrong with her, and wondering whether he really was being slightly over analytical, because a performance like that only came from Cuddy on her best form. As per usual, as he entered the room, he tossed the file in his hand on to the table almost like a Frisbee, but didn't say a word to his fellows, still deep in thought. He was only brought of his trance when Taub spoke, without even opening the file.

"What were you and Cuddy arguing about out there? She usually likes to have her arguments with you in here, in front of us, presumably to try and humiliate you a little bit, if that's even possible…"

"Oh, we were arguing about something she wouldn't want you guys to hear, you know. She's finding it difficult to walk today and she insists she told me to stop last night but I swear I heard her begging me not to. It's just a little communication issue, nothing you kids need to worry about." After taking off his coat and manly scarf, and dropping his flat cap on top of the computer, House moved slowly towards the whiteboard that stood in his office, picked up the pen from the ledge and twirled it carelessly in his fingers seemingly waiting for something. When no one spoke up, he looked at his three employees expectantly. "Come on then, someone tell me what we're dealing with here? I haven't actually read the file, Cuddy just thrust it at me and I took it, out of habit." He smirked at his own joke then continued to watch them impatiently.

Foreman lay back, almost as if he was at home and relaxed, in his chair and recited a fair patient history by heart, even after only looking at the file a mere two minutes earlier. "A forty two year old female who has been deaf and blind all her life, and has present with unexplained renal failure. She has terrible health since she was a young girl but nothing has ever been pinned on one single cause. She's on dialysis at the moment but unless she wants to stay that way for the rest of her life, we need to find out why her kidneys are shutting down." He then clasped his hands under his chin matter-of-factly, as if he'd just proved a point.

At this, House turned to his white board and wrote 'kidney failure' in as large letters as he could possibly imagine, and then turned back around acting as if he were a teacher, teaching a kinder garden class. "Now, can anyone expand on what Dr. Foreman told me, or is he really as much as a show off as that made him look?"

"Aren't you including her other health problems in the differential? I mean, it can't be a coincidence that this woman has been plagued by so many things since birth and now her kidneys have completely given up when she's only middle aged? Even if you excluded things that have occurred in single instances, surely we should at least include her deafness and blindness?" Thirteen swung her long, straight, brunette hair over her shoulder, and raised her eyebrows at him as she asked what she thought was a very adequate question.

"If we were treating an amputee, would we include his lack of some limb as part of the differential? No, I didn't think so. Her inability to see or her may have absolutely nothing to whatsoever to do with her kidneys failing – but then only way we can know that is if we find out _why _her kidneys are failing. And if we include deafness and blindness in the ddx and they actually aren't symptoms at all, it could take us a whole lot longer to work out what actually is wrong with her kidneys." House made a gesture to suggest she was completely and utterly stupid for even asking that question.

However, not convinced at all by his argument, she continued to press the subject earnestly. "But that's ridiculous, she's had her problems hearing and seeing since she was born – so if anything that could strongly suggest a genetic factor. I know infants can develop lack of sight or hearing but the chances of a baby being born without both and then going on to have kidney problems too in later life – the odds are astronomical. And adding them in to the mix decreases the differential massively – there are a million and one things that can cause renal failure, you know that. But there are very few things that cause renal failure, and deafness and blindness as a child."

House just repeated his look of slight disgust and decided it would be quicker and easier to try and move on and completely ignoring her attempts to get her point across because as far as he was concerned, her point was completely invalid. "If there are so many – a million and one actually, if we take the medical dictionary by the words of Dr. Remy Hadley – possible causes for kidney failure, we shouldn't be sitting here in silence, you should be suggesting those million and one causes to me. Come on, come on, wake up! We haven't got all day! This patient's kidneys aren't going to wait for you lot to wake your brains up and start thinking like doctors."

"Kidney stones?" Taub obeyed, however spoke in a rather dull and monotone voice as if this was actually the last place in the world he wanted to be right now and this was the last patient on the earth he wanted to be treating right now.

"Come on Taub, with a bit more enthusiasm than that! This a woman who has struggled through life from birth with terrible disabilities and she's got to the respectable age of forty two only to hit another life threatening hurdle – kidney failure. You could sound a bit more sincere about finding out what is causing that kidney problem, couldn't you?" House's voice was extremely fake, high pitched and completely patronizing, just as he'd intended it to sounds as he was doing his best to wind Dr. Taub up.

Usually, Taub would greet blatant sarcasm like that with a sarcastic witty comment of his own, but as it happened that morning he was extremely tired and without the energy for the argument it was bound to provoke, so he simply did exactly as he was told for once in his life. "Oh, well, kidney failure? I wonder if that could be caused by kidney stones?"

It was only then did House choose his moment to twist the knife in in the absolute worst way possible – taking advantage of the fact that Taub had actually been willingly compliant for once. "Oh course it's not kidney stones, you moron. I thought we established that it was unexplained kidney failure? It would not remain unexplained and reach my desk through the delightfully skilful hands of our dean of medicine if more than one person had not done the simple imaging test it takes to confirm kidney stones and found the negative. Really, how on earth did you get through medical school if being slightly tired wipes all ability to give a half decent explanation for a symptom from your mind?" After his ridicule of his oldest fellow, he turned to the other two for more appropriate ideas.

"She could just have, over her life time, pumped far too many different drugs in to her body in too high a quantities? They still to this day haven't found out the source of the issues she was born with and they've given her a lot of experimental drugs in the hope that one of them will have some effect on whatever has done this to her. They could have become toxic." Thirteen chipped in but very briskly, as she was still extremely annoyed by, at the very least, his methods of attempting to silence her ideas.

"If the medications she'd been given had poisoned her kidneys, they wouldn't be the only things that were failing. There are a huge amount of different combinations of different trials she's been – there's only the tiniest chance that they would only target her kidneys and nothing else. That's also probably why she's had so many health problems – all these drugs are bound to have had side effects, but just like nobody else does, she didn't read the leaflet inside the box with her medication which told her what the side effects could possibly be. It's not toxic shock from too much medication." Though House was noticeably kinder when dismissing Thirteen's idea. Not kind, he was never kind, it seemed to be physically impossible for him to be kind at all, but remarkably kinder than he was to Taub when he came up with a ridiculous idea.

Having not flinched throughout the whole massacring of Taub and the rejection of Thirteen's perfectly valid theory, Foreman then opened his mouth to offer a suggestion."What about polycystic kidney disease? If the cysts were relapsing and recurring, they could come and go, and could have just happened to be gone when any of the imaging studies were taken. The only way we can catch them for sure is to open her up and inspect the kidneys for any signs of constant breaking of skin and cysts forming."

House cursed himself for not being able to find anything to use in that suggestion to rip Foreman apart with along with his other two colleagues. He sighed in resignation and reluctantly nodded. "Okay, I don't actually have any objections to that one so you seem to be off the hook for once Dr. Foreman. So as a reward, you can go and inform little miss unlucky that her luck may have changed because the amazing 'Dr. House' and his team have figured out what is wrong with her and she should make a good recovery. And I'll go and busy myself trying to convince Dr. Chase that we have perfectly good grounds for exploratory surgery and that we actually have permission from hers truly. Enjoy yourselves my little cherubs!" With that, he walked straight out of the room without another word and left his fellows in almost a stunned silence.

* * *

><p>It wasn't very often you would find him in the viewing gallery of the operating room – because very rarely did he care enough about any of his patients to go and waste his own time watching their surgery, or any surgery at all. Therefore, when he was found there, it was always for a completely different reason – usually that he wanted something. House had been standing there for upwards of twenty minutes for the surgeon finally gave up pretending he wasn't there, looked up from the patient he was operating on and to the large window situated above one end of the OR. "House, what do you want?"<p>

Using his cane to press the intercom button to allow the surgeon to hear him, House made his voice sound extremely innocent. "Well you're very cynical Dr. Chase, why do I need to want something to come and watch my patient's surgery?"

"Don't make me waste my time answering that question and playing games, this man's intestines are hanging out in front of me and I'm supposed to be removing a cancerous tumour from his liver so that requires more of my concentration than you do. So just spit it out, please." It was clear that Dr. Chase felt under a huge amount of pressure as his voice was wavering significantly as he spoke.

"I need you to do an exploratory surgery on one of my patients. We think she's got polycystic kidney disease, but the cysts seem to be relapsing and recurring and that's why we're not finding them on the imagers. So I want you to open her up and look for scarring on her kidneys and we'll have our confirmed diagnosis and all will be well in time for thanksgiving."

Despite the fact that he had a patient open and under anaesthetic in front of his and he was supposed to be performing an operation in a certain time limit, Chase turned around to raise his eyebrow at House. "I'm sure you do. And I'm sure Cuddy's also already said no which is why you're coming to ask me directly. But fortunately for me, rather unfortunately for you, you're not my boss anymore therefore I can actually say no to you. Because she _is _my boss and she's bloody terrifying."

Pressing the intercom button again and this time leaning on his cane as it was pressed on the button as if it was going to help his case in some way, House retaliated immediately. "Oh, don't think I don't still have a great number of ways to make your life miserable, Dr. Chase, even if I'm not your boss anymore. But that's beside the point and also not in the interest of my patient or that patient down there right now so I'll get to the point. What would you say if I told you Cuddy didn't say no?" He even winced a bit as he said it, knowing it was a long shot.

"Then I'd go and ask her because that either means you're lying to me, or you haven't actually asked her at all yet, but I'd assume the former on the basis that your own philosophy is 'everybody lies' and that must include you." Chase stopped talking but was still concentrating hard on the slow incisions he was making in to the patients liver, being careful to ensure he didn't bleed out while the tumour was being removed. However, when the reply he was expecting didn't come, he was left to assume that it was actually the unexpected answer. "Oh, so you haven't even asked her yet? That's weird. I mean, I know you avoid contact with her at all costs but this is extreme, even for you. Coming straight to me to ask me to do a procedure without her permission when you know I'm going to say no, without even giving her the chance to say no in the first place? That's a whole new level of avoidance, that is. What's going on?"

House cursed himself for even getting in to this conversation without Chase – he should have seen it coming – because he knew he'd never drop it until he got answers, which meant that he was going to have to answer the questions, or be persistently annoyed for the next week. And frankly, House didn't think a week of persistence and harassment and being subjected to Chase ten times more than usual was worth refusing to answer him now. But that didn't mean he wasn't going to at least attempt to get out of it first, before giving in. "Oh for Christ's sake, if I'd known this was going to turn in to an interrogation, I never would have bothered coming. What is it with everyone trying to psychoanalyse me at the moment? You, Wilson, Cuddy… Everything I do, every tries to work out the meaning behind it. It's getting really boring you know…"

However, Chase had worked with House for long enough to know when he was trying to manipulate someone and the down side of that meant that he was basically immune to it. "Well maybe if you stopped doing to every person you met, then people would stop using your own weapons against you. Anyway, don't try and distract me, why are you avoiding her so obsessively? What's happened? Have you said something to her about how you feel?"

"That's another thing, you know, why is everyone so obsessed with the idea that I feel something about her? I do not feel anything but increasing lust which she dampens extremely effectively when she acts like the uptight screeching hyena that she is. Oh, yeah, and the only other thing I feel for her is pity – I mean she's very rapidly approaching forty and she's bringing up a baby on her own, she has no life whatsoever outside of work and no prospect of the long term relationship she's been pining for for as long as I've known her, and not only that but none of her staff respect her – well, I don't and I'm her most important, influential and talented employee anyway. So, she's got it pretty grim, hasn't she? So of course I feel pity for her, but who wouldn't?" Unconsciously, House spoke every word of that extremely fast, even though apart from that he was highly convincing.

"Stop deflecting. I'm not asking you to get personal with me and have a heart to heart, I'm only asking you why you're so insistent upon avoiding her for no apparent reason. If I knew the reason, I wouldn't be harassing you." But, panicking a little, Chase could see as he made another careful incision with the scalpel that he was nearing the hepatic artery, and he knew he had to be careful not to nick it, therefore it would need his full concentration. It was only because of that that he gave up the game and let House get out with the answer he cleverly given, but not without some man to man advice first. "Oh fine, whatever you say, but for God's sake please go and tell her how you feel and get it over with. I can't believe how much of a coward you are. Oh, and by the way, I'm not doing the surgery until you get her approval for it so you're going to have to go and speak to her at some point or your patient will die, and we couldn't have that, could we?"


	12. Chapter 12

**Again guys, thank you so much for the reviews. I hope this satisfies you - I really wanted to do a good job of this chapter, and I was pretty pleased with it when I finished! Even if I do feel a bit cruel... But the only other thing I have to say on the matter is that 13 is my lucky number... x]**

**Also, as I've said, this is the last chapter I've written so I'm going to try and keep to the schedule of how often I update but it just might not be possible - I've got so much pressure on my work this term so I'll write and update as and when I can from now on!**

**I won't go on for no reason; I really hope I've done this chapter justice, please let me know what you think by leaving a review on your way out! :D xxx**

**XII**

"It's not polycystic kidney disease – there's no high blood pressure, at all. If anything, it's a little bit low. But we thought you might like to know before you bribe some unsuspecting surgeon in to cutting her open for no reason."

House awoke with a start at the sound of Thirteen's voice and as he jumped up, his jacket fell on to the floor from over his face. It was pitch black in the room, but he could vaguely see the silhouettes of three people standing in front of him. As he pushed himself up from the soft couch he was lying on, he saw one of the outlines move, and then suddenly the room was flooded with light. He held his hands in front of his eyes and snapped them shut immediately. "For God's sake, turn the lights off." He wasn't sure who it was, but one of his fellows did as they were told and the room was suddenly plunged back in to darkness, enabling him to relax his eyes and open them again.

The shortest of the three stepped forward, seemingly because he thought that would make him more noticeable, therefore House was more likely to listen to him and answer his question. "What on earth are you doing sleeping in Wilson's office anyway? If you want to go to sleep, go home, but if you really want to sleep at work, which I assume is a ploy to annoy Cuddy, why not sleep in your own office?"

"For three reasons, my tiny little Taub. Firstly because actually, contrary to popular belief, do not want to annoy my boss. I actually want to keep as far away as possible from her, and since Wilson has gone home for the day, she's not likely to look in here. The second reason being, that I thought it would be less likely that you three would find me than if I slept in my own office. Clearly I underestimated you all, and you're more intelligent than I thought. But finally, if Wilson walked in in the morning and you lot had actually left me to sleep, and I was sleeping on his sofa, he would have had an absolute heart attack, and it would have been comedy gold. But you seemed to have foiled every one of these plans bar the first one, but by the sounds of it we're at least going to have to have another differential so I might have to go and see madam ice knickers after all." House then rubbed his temples firmly and systematically, breathing in and then out slowly before letting out a long sigh.

"Thirteen and I have discussed it and we are of the opinion that there is no need for another differential just yet. We only have one symptom – renal failure, and there are hundreds of different possible causes for that one symptom. Time will give us more answers – if this is some sort of life threatening rampant disease, it'll start hitting other organs or at least her kidneys will get significantly worse if we don't do anything, and also, we'll have more symptoms to work with. If it's not so dangerous, then at least we'll have more information which will narrow the field, even if it is only slightly." Foreman stood at the back of the group with his arms folded across his chest, and spoke as if he had some sort of authority or superiority over the others.

At that Taub raised his eyebrows and turned around to look at his colleague behind him. "Oh, really? And when did you have that discussion? Am I just so crap that I no longer warrant consultation in group decisions anymore?" He looked highly affronted and offended by the fact that he seemed to have been discounted, or worse, forgotten.

"Pipe down, you're not five years old. Besides, they're screwing each other, they're not likely to forget one another, are they?" House quickly brushed aside Taub's objection and pleas for attention, branding it as just another symptom of his particular strain of small person syndrome. He then turned to his other two fellows, who seemingly had had an in depth discussion and made a decision about what _he _was going to do without actually telling him. "Oh really? And what makes you think I'm going to pay the slightest bit of attention to what you think?" His voice was almost sickly sweet but with the intention of being sarcastic and ironic.

Foreman, as usual, let absolutely no expression ever flicker past his face as his boss spoke, and didn't even drop his defensive stance, if anything he made it bolder. "Because it means you can go home and just wait until something happens instead of actually doing your job – staying at work and treating the poor woman. And you might be stubborn, but you're not stubborn enough to pass up the opportunity of effectively a free day off work – as long as Dr. Cuddy doesn't find out." He was almost over confident and arrogant, which was an attitude that was very likely to cause House to prove him wrong.

However, luckily, House wasn't in a confrontational mood and, after everything over the last couple of days, quite fancied a day off for absolutely no reason other than to piss Cuddy off, so he nodded. "Alright then. It's a very effective use of my time, so just leave her on dialysis and do nothing else, and see what happens." But as all three of his fellows turned to leave, he opened his mouth again to stop them. "Ah, ah, ah, wait a second, Thirteen, you've been exceptionally quiet." And then he saw a golden opportunity to stir up trouble, which was something he most definitely couldn't surpass. "Don't you agree with your boyfriend's suggestion? I thought it came from both of you?"

Thirteen shuffled uncomfortably on the spot, staring at the same spot on the floor and only looked up after a couple of seconds of silence. But when she did, her expression was ticked off and even slightly callous. "Yes, I do agree with the suggestion." She could almost feel her boss' eyes boring in to her, as if willing her to disagree with Foreman, and the pressure from his glare finally made her snap. "Yes, I do actually agree with his suggestion, the only reason I'm keeping my mouth shut is because _don't _agree with the abysmal way you are treating this patient. You are regarding her with no respect, ignoring all of the ordeals in her life which she thinks have attributed to, or at least are connected to, her condition today. And one of the things we are taught as doctors, not that you'd know, is to listen to the patient's opinion, because even if they have absolutely no relevant medical knowledge, they know their own body better than anyone else. She's terrified, because she's battled through so much to get to the age of forty two, and if we don't find out what's wrong with her, this may well be one battle she doesn't not win. And you can't even give her the time of day. So yes, I agree with Dr. Foreman's suggestion and he did discuss it with me, so I knew he was going to suggest it to you. What I have a problem with is you. Not that that will make any difference what so ever to your actions though, because it never does, and I'm not naïve enough to think that I could be the one to change you if I just give one more heartfelt, emotional speech." She let out a long sigh when she finished talking but somehow felt empowered, and stood definitely in front of him, waiting for him to tear her to pieces.

But again, the ridicule never came, because frankly, House didn't even care enough. He just shrugged his shoulders and nodded, then gestured towards the door in his lazy impression of a dismissal. "Fine, whatever you say Dr. Hadley. We all know you see yourself in this woman in some crazy way - you always seem to be able to find some connection between yourself and our patients; usually the fact that you're dying as well as them. But I would prefer it if you practised your righteous lectures on your boyfriend rather than me, because I might get some on me. Go on, go home. All of you. That will annoy Cuddy even more than just me not being here. But whatever you do, don't turn your pagers off, we don't want this patient to die on our care. Because that would give the administrator an excuse to come and rant in my office and all of us for hours on end, and I have much more important and interesting things I could be doing. Go on, off you go!" He waved them towards the door impatient.

One by one, like naughty school children, they filed out of the office immediately without a word – only a look designed to kill from his female employee. Taub was the last out, and shut the door behind him, plunging House back in to complete and utter darkness again, rather than the grey, dull haze there had been before due to the lights from the corridors outside.

* * *

><p>House really had intended to go home, but when he got on his motorbike, it seemingly subconsciously took him elsewhere. There was almost a war waging in his head; part of him really, really didn't want to see her, because every time he did, his stomach burned and twisted in knots with anger and jealousy. Another part of him, he assumed this was the part of him controlling the motorbike, wanted to have it out with her. Tell her exactly how much she'd hurt him, tell her exactly what she'd done to him, and make her feel as guilty as hell, and hurt as much as he was. Either that or win her over, before this nightmare got any worse and escalated any further. And a final part of him was feeling an emotion it wasn't very often he felt – he was scared. He hated admitting he was scared, but he was. He was scared that if he turned up, Lucas might be there with her, and that may well be the thing that would push him over the edge; he wasn't sure he was quite ready to see them together – playing happy families – just yet, because he hadn't come to terms with it. But he was also scared of her rejection. He was scared of no matter what he said or did, there is nothing that would make her change her mind. He'd always been so confident and cock sure of the fact that she wanted him – and he still was sure that she wanted him, he just wasn't sure that she'd listen to her heart over her head. Because last time they kissed, he reminded her what she was missing – what she could have – and she didn't fall straight in to his arms, instead she left his apartment in floods of tears, presumably back in to the arms of Lucas who made it all go away. He didn't have the confidence in himself to know that he could win anymore, and that thought, especially when it was distinctly possible he was about to put his whole heart on a plate and offer it to her, was one of the scariest of all.<p>

In fact, what actually scared him the most was the fact that he didn't know why he was going to her house. He didn't know what he wanted, or what he intended to do. He didn't know if it was for the purpose of screaming and shouting and releasing all his anger and jealousy, or whether it was to try and make her his. Nothing was making sense in his head, and he was barely watching the roads as his single head light carved a path in the darkness before him. The roads were fairly quiet, but he was swinging and swerving around corners at dangerous speeds as if he didn't care for his own safety, or for anyone else's that was driving that night.

When he finally reached her street, he drove much slower down it because he didn't want her to hear the roar of the engine, until he cut it out completely outside her house. He sat for a moment, perched on his motorbike, and looked through the living room window – the blinds were open and the light was on so he could see exactly what was going on. He saw her, in what looked like a comfy pair of jeans she usually wore around the house, but they really accentuated her curves, and a large, woolly cream jumper that right up to her neck and covered most of her hands, presumably to keep her warm. Her hair was loose and falling elegantly down her back in its soft natural waves, and she kept shaking it absent-mindedly, and playing with it. She looked nothing like she did at work, but that wasn't to say she didn't look as good because in fact, she looked wonderful, and that only made it harder from where House was sitting. He could see she was wandering around the lounge, occasionally bending down to pick things up from the floor and walking in and out of the room – presumable she was tidying up after putting Rachel to bed.

He'd been in a position remarkably similar to this one once before, and it really hadn't turned out as planned. As vividly as if it were yesterday, he remembered standing outside her front door less than a year ago, last time he made the stupid decision of taking Wilson's advice, and contemplating confessing his feelings for her. At that moment, his courage failed him and his cynicism went into over drive, and he walked away without even knocking on the door. Who knows where they'd both be now if that night had gone differently – whichever way it had gone, he was sure he wouldn't be standing there at this moment. Cuddy may have never even ended up in a relationship with Lucas – in fact, it could be him she was happily in a relationship with right now…

Shuddering, he forced that thought out of his mind. It was torturous, and it did nothing to calm the fear writhing around in the pit of his stomach. Because regardless of how wounded and angry he was, there was still someone in the back of his mind, he presumed it was Wilson, reminding him that if he went ahead with this, it was quite possible that he would lose her forever. And that was not a possibility he could stand. He was all too aware of how easily he'd talked himself out of seeing her last time – and even though the situation, the consequences, and the stakes had been entirely different back, being a coward didn't exactly work out well for him in the first place. In a moment of reckless determination, he limped across the gravel of her driveway as fast as his leg and cane could manage and knocked rather aggressively on her front door.

Upon hearing a pronounced knock at the door, Cuddy glanced at her watch in surprise. It was roughly twenty to eleven – she could never tell exactly because her designer watch was far too expensive to have actual numbers on it. Either way, it was too late for cold callers trying to sell her something, and Lucas was working until past midnight so would go back to his own apartment when he was finished so as not to wake her or Rachel. During House's long train of thought, she'd left the living room and moved in to the kitchen, stacking dishes beside the sink to restore some sort of order and retrieving a wine glass from the cupboard. She slipped the bottle of wine she was about to pour herself a glass from back in to the door of the fridge, and approached the front door, just as there was another loud hollow whack on it, like wood on wood. Wincing and clicking her tongue angrily, she anxiously looked up the stairs and strained her ears for any sign of movement, hoping beyond hope that the noise hadn't woken Rachel. When she heard no indication that it had, she then turned herself to the door, unhooked it from the latch and opened it with a little more force than was particularly necessary. Upon surveying the figure on the other side her stomach immediately contorted into knots but she did everything in her power to make sure it didn't show. "I should have known it was you; Rachel's in bed you know, and if you've woken her she'll never get back to sleep. So what the hell do you want?"

The fact that she stood before him, bold as brass, as if she'd done nothing wrong whatsoever and there was absolutely nothing she was hiding from him, only irritated House more. But he knew he had to control that for at least a couple of minutes to ensure she actually let him in the house. "Come on, aren't you going to let the cripple come in? Standing outside in the cold is only going to make my leg worse, and I'll have to wait for it to play nice before I can manage to get home aga-"

"Alright, you don't have to play the pathetic cripple card, I'm too tired." She tutted, cutting his story short as she didn't have the patience to be lied to and manipulated tonight. Stepping back from the door she opened it further to allow him to limp inside, and then closed it behind him to keep the warmth in. However, she remained standing in front of the door and made no move to sit down or make herself comfortable in the living room, as she didn't want to give him any indication that he was staying for any length of time.

You could have cut the tension between them with a knife, despite how hard he'd tried to diffuse the situation and catch her off guard. It was clear that she was going to make no invitation for him to sit, so instead he took it upon himself to move into the lounge and sit on the nearest sofa. Ignoring her expression of extreme annoyance as she followed him, he began speaking before she launched into a predictable lecture about his lack of respect. "I am here, to ask you why you didn't tell me that you boyfriend was none other than Lucas Douglas, private investigator." His voice was only calm and expression impassive and simple due to the huge amount of self control he was exhibiting over himself and his emotions.

This was not a conversation she was ready to have right now – she'd known it was going to come but she hadn't prepared for the eventuality just yet. Denial had been an all too comfortable place for her to want to leave already. She could feel her heart rate quickening significantly in her chest, but she knew she had to keep a lid on her panic, as it would only make a bad situation worse. Every second she hesitated and deigned from replying, she could feel his eyes upon her, daring her to deny it, or to explain herself. Her brain was running in over drive, desperately trying to formulate some sort of sentence in response to his accusation that wouldn't provoke an argument. She knew she couldn't take his apparent nonchalance at face value – no amount of therapy or rehabilitation could have made him accept this situation without a fight. Upon beginning to speak, it took an incredible amount of effort to keep her voice steady and ensure it didn't shake. "I didn't tell you, because I didn't see how it was any of your business. Don't think you're special – I didn't tell anyone. My personal life is just that, personal, and I do not want or need anyone else's judgements or opinions on it."

"No-one would judge you, if there was nothing to judge you for Cuddy." It didn't require being as perceptive as he was to see that this was not a conversation she was comfortable with. This was a relief to him, because he knew he couldn't get angry first, or she'd have every right to blame this on him, but he didn't know how long he could pretend that this didn't bother him. So all he had to do was wait for her to lose her cool, and then he could let rip. But in that moment, he hated her. He hated that she could make him do something that no-one else could – for her, he was pretending. For her he was implementing the mental censor we all possess that tells us what it is appropriate to say, considering what you want out of a situation. And most of all, he hated himself. He hated himself for letting another woman have that power over him, when after Stacy he swore never again. Even worse, because this was different; with Stacy, he did it because he cared for her. With Cuddy, he did care for her, very much so, but he did it because he had to – because he wanted and needed her so much, he needed to not screw this up.

"Everyone would judge me, regardless if there was anything to judge me for, and you know it. I'm not ashamed of Lucas, if that's what you're implying. I'm happy with him, ok? Don't try and make this in to anything else." Every word she spoke was a calculated decision of risk, and she hated it. She hated the fact that their relationship had been reduced to this – he'd always been the one to tell her the cold, hard truth and he was always the one she didn't have to lie to. But everything had changed, and she'd known she was going to have to accept this when she embarked on the relationship with Lucas, it was just harder than ever when the evidence of what they'd lost was staring her in the face. Her eyes started to sting from salty tears threatening to build up and burst out, but she choked them back like a true professional – without showing any sign of their existence.

House knew he had to provoke her, because he knew it was the only way they'd ever be honest with each other. His rationalization for that decision was Wilson, inside his head, telling him "You have to make her angry.". Maybe it wasn't for the same reasons as last time, but it seemed like a good excuse to him. But he still knew he had to do it in a way that she couldn't blame him for. He chose his next words carefully. "I never asked you to justify your relationship to me. You don't have to; like you said, it's none of my business. But I'm not a child – even though considering my collection of yoyos you could argue the opposite – I can handle it, you know. You should have told me straight away, don't I at least deserve that courtesy?"

Immediately, as if right on cue, she felt annoyance bubble up inside her and, before she could stop it, force its way out of her mouth. "Don't do this House, don't you dare make out that I'm the bad person here. I try to go away and live a _normal _life for one weekend, and you can't keep your nose out. You have to interfere, and ruin it, because you can't stand the idea of me being with someone else. You can't stand the idea of me being happy. So don't you dare take the high road with me – you deserve nothing from me. I don't owe you anything." The moment she stopped speaking, she felt a rush of two conflicting emotions. She felt an almost irrepressible urge to sigh with relief, that she had finally been able to speak freely about how much he had put her through, and that it was like a weight of residual anger was lifted from her. But she also felt deep regret, mingled with fear. She'd never wanted to hurt him. Upon dating Lucas it was always going to be an inevitable side effect, but she just never imagined it happening like this, or to this gravity.

"I deserve nothing from you? You can't mess me around Cuddy – you kissed me then ran off back to your boyfriend like nothing happened. I came out of rehab and I stupidly let my best friend convince me that I could actually be happy; all I needed to achieve that was you. I've kept off the vicodin for months, and continued to do so in an attempt to prove to you that I am worthy of your affections. I'm an addict, and you led me on… And you think you don't owe me anything? Wake up and realise what you got yourself in to. Last week, I would have agreed with you. Last week, before you kissed me, it was all me trying to interfere with your life. But not now, not this time." If he'd had the strength in his leg, he would have stood up from the sofa to enforce his point, but he couldn't manage it. It was a shock to the system, because unlike ever before, some of the things he was using to provoke her were actually true. A lot of them were deeply over exaggerated, but every single one had a modicum of truth behind it. However, he also got some twisted satisfaction out of seeing the effect his words had on her; he'd hit every tender spot on her conscience and he could see that finally what she was feeling now rivalled the sense of pain he'd experienced when he heard Lucas' voice.

Every word she'd wanted to say and every emotion she'd felt since the moment they'd shared that kiss was building up in her mind; tumbling around so she couldn't make sense of any of it, and threatening to burst out at any moment. He had provoked her, but in a way that she knew was extremely dangerous. Feelings of confusion, self loathing and desperation wrapped around her heart like a fist, and it felt like she was being suffocated from within. She hated what she'd done to him more than she believed he'd ever know, or understand. It was all she could do to stop tears streaming down her face as the seeds of doubt she'd planted in her mind, and Wilson had unknowingly nurtured, about her relationship with Lucas burst in to full bloom. And it was like her mouth started moving, and words began falling out without her consent and completely out of her control. For once, her heart was acting before her head. "Christ, you have absolutely no idea. We'd never work – you're a crippled, irresponsible, recovering drug addict and I'm a single mom who has a hospital to run. You're too hard work, you're unreliable, you're selfish, you're arrogant and you've got the mother of all egos. And how the hell could I leave you around Rachel? She's a baby; she needs consistency, stability, and unconditional love. In a couple of years time she'll be going to school and she needs someone who'll help with her homework, remember to pick her up from dance class or gym. Not someone who'll never turn up for her music recitals and not bother to help her pick a outfit for her birthday party. No matter how many times Wilson tells me you've changed, you're still House and I can't put my daughter through that." She took a deep breath, and stepped out from hiding behind her child. "And I can't put myself through that, either. But none of those things mean I don't think of you, compare every aspect of my relationship with Lucas to you. They don't mean that I don't live for the battles of wills between us that can go back and forth for sometimes days. That is why we kissed. And that's why I have to keep my distance from you – it's not fair on him. He's dependable, he treats me amazingly and he's great with Rachel. He makes me laugh, he cares for me, and I think he loves me. And he makes me happy." She could have stopped there, but she didn't. "But none of that, not one single bit of it, means that I'm not still in love with you."

* * *

><p>Upon hearing the incessant ringing of his cell phone, Wilson groaned, blindly reached to the other side of the bed without opening his eyes, grabbed a pillow and held it over his own head. This wasn't actually a suicide mission, but an extremely tired attempt to drown out the sound disturbing his sleep. Then for about a minute, his phone lay silent and still on the bedside cabinet, and he was lulled into a false sense of security. He lifted the pillow and turned over, ready to be swallowed back in to sleep – and then the ringing resumed. Groggily and extremely reluctantly, he pushed himself into the sitting position cursing under his breath, rubbed his eyes and blinked a few times before glancing at the digital clock on top of his chest of drawers. It was almost half eleven but he'd gone to bed early after an extremely exhausting day. He sighed and reached over for the cell phone and without even looking at the display for the identity of the caller, flipped it open and pressed it to the side of his face. "House, I'm trying to sleep. Go away."<p>

"It's not House, it's Foreman. And Thirteen and Taub. Do you know where he is?"

The surprise of hearing a voice on the other end of the line that wasn't that of his best friend woke him up slightly. "Oh, right, sorry. Is he not answering his phone? I know he said something about going to see-" But as Wilson thought about the end to that sentence, he decided it might be best not to finish it. If House had indeed gone to see Cuddy and that was why he wasn't answering his phone, whichever way it turned out, they had to be left to sort themselves out or things would only get worse between them. So instead, he was a little creative with the truth. "No, I don't know where he is. Is there anything I can help with?"

All sitting around the glass table in House's outer office, with the office phone on speaker phone, Foreman, Thirteen and Taub all looked at one another. They knew the course of action they'd suggested, and House had sanctioned, left them hugely open for liability which made them reluctant to divulge it, but on the other hand, Wilson was used to House's idea of a good plan of action and therefore would probably not be surprised by the decision and would definitely not get Cuddy involved, considering that was the last thing House would want. Each of the three fellows nodded at one another and came to a silent understanding to tell him the truth. Foreman took the lead, as per usual. "We've got a patient with renal failure – she has a history of extremely poor health and is slightly obese, which we didn't tell House because it's not medically relevant and he'd only mock her, but her only new and fatal symptom is her kidneys. There are so many possible explanations for kidney failure that House thou-" He faltered, frowning a little, "_we_ thought it might be a reasonable idea to do nothing, and wait for more information, so we can narrow the ddx. Except, now she's a whole lot worse."

Wilson sighed, rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand and made a very apprehensive decision. "Okay, don't worry about House, I'll deal with him. Start running a differential between yourselves and I'll be with you in no longer than twenty five minutes." He cut off the call without waiting for a reply, and climbed slowly out of bed, hoping he'd made the right decision and House and Cuddy were actually somewhere dealing with their issues.


	13. Chapter 13

**Hey guys, thank again for the wonderful reviews, they're really what pushed me to write this chapter as I was so worried about doing it! So honestly, your feedback means the world to me.**

**I hope this chapter is okay, I haven't written anything of this sort for a long, LONG time - like, several years - so I'm well aware that it could suck. But I hope it doesn't. And also, a warning for anyone who hasn't seen the edited description, an M rating begins here!**

**And a special thanks to Reena (Katheryn Mae) who helped me out with the medically stuff and who kicked me up the ass to finish it today. She's written an amazing s8 one shot that she posted today called 'Return' which you should all go and read if you haven't already. Ok, I'll shush now, and I hope you enjoy the update! :)**

* * *

><p><strong>XIII<strong>

She didn't know what made her say it, and after she said it she wondered what had come over her. It was something so personal and so sensitive she'd never even admitted it to herself, never mind the person to whom it concerned. For what felt like hours, but in reality was less than a minute, a heavy silence descended on the room. It was only disturbed by her slow movements as she walked to the sofa opposite him, sank deeply in to it and let her head fall into her hands, splaying her fingers and running them through her hair.

It was a rare occasion for House to be rendered speechless; this time it was a result of shock more than anything else. If she was going to say anything to him, that was the last thing he would have expected. It took him a few moments to get his bearings and recover, but then his brain began to process what she actually said. And even more so than that – he actually began to feel. She was in love with him. She was _still _in love with him, which indicated she'd been in love with him for a significant period of time. She was still in love with him, regardless of Lucas. The feelings were there, he didn't have to make them out of nothing. He just had to make her want to act on them. He wanted to stop for a moment, and just feel elated, and hopeful, but he was wary that such emotions might cloud his judgement. "If you're in love with me… Doesn't that make all of those things worth it? I mean, you never know, I could be good with Rachel. But that's a discovery for the future – I'm not asking you to let me move in or even introduce me to her. None of that means you can't give us a chance. If you really are in love with me, you can't spend the rest of your life ignoring that… Surely you have to at least try?" He wasn't playing games anymore. She'd been honest with him, so he decided it was time to be honest with her. His voice had lost its harshness and anger, and was more tentative than he'd ever heard himself speak. He looked over the coffee table at her, but she was still staring at the floor, her fingers entangled in her dark curls. And for the first time since he'd realised his night with her had been nothing more than a drug-induced hallucination, he looked and felt vulnerable.

"It's not that simple." Cuddy's voice was muffled when she first spoke due to the direction in which she was facing, but after a deep intake of breath and the sound of her then slowly exhaling, she finally looked up at him. She looked lost, bewildered almost, and as if she was in a lot of pain. Not physical pain – but like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders and she was struggling to withstand the pressure. She hoped for a second, considering for the first time in a long time that he seemed to be calm and genuine, that she could actually explain herself to him. Make him understand why she couldn't just drop everything and embark on a spontaneous affair with him. "Lucas is good for me. Lucas is good for me and for Rachel. You might be right, but you know as well as I do that any relationship you and I had would be extremely high risk. We have so much history and such a delicate working balance, and not to mention raging tempers and completely different priorities – there is a huge, huge chance we wouldn't make it. And if we don't, then what happens? I've thrown away a man who was a great father figure to my daughter, and who cared for me and looked after me, all for a fling that always had only a slim chance of leading to something feasibly permanent. He may not be you House, he may not be the man of my dreams, but he's good enough…"

He tried as hard as he possibly could not to raise his voice as he got frustrated. Knowing her argument was completely valid made his case all the more difficult, and he really didn't like that this was beginning to feel like he was begging her to choose him. But he also knew that if he let his pride get in the way of this chance, he may well regret it for the rest of his life. He didn't have to swallow it, just set it aside for a while until he made her realise what she wanted. "Good enough? When the hell have you ever settled for good enough? Not as long as I've known you… Damn it Cuddy, for once it your life, stop calculating every possible outcome. Stop weighing up the risks, the pros and cons of every decision you make. I know you've got a little girl to consider now, I know this isn't all about you anymore, but that isn't a valid excuse. I know I'm screwed up, but you know, you're pretty screwed up too. So stop thinking everything through and over analysing this and just tell me who you'd rather spend the rest of your life with; me or him. Because if it's him, I'll walk out of that door and you'll never hear me mention this again. But if it's me, I'm not leaving here until we've released twenty years worth of sexual frustration and foreplay, or you've given me a damn good reason why we shouldn't."

The corners of her mouth twitched upwards in to something that resembled an amused smile and she assumed that was his intention. If he was trying to remind her why she was in love with him to make it harder for her to refuse him, he was certainly doing a very good job. One of the irresistible things about him was how he made her feel – every day he could make her feel desired, sexy and attractive, even if sometimes it was in a slightly derogatory way. She thought about what he said and began asking herself the very question he'd just posed to her. And almost subconsciously, she did exactly what he told her not to do: complied a mental list of good points and bad points of each of them. But that wasn't letting her heart decide – she closed her eyes for a moment and imagined today was her last day on earth. Which man would she run to? The answer came to her in a heartbeat; it was like someone had flicked a switch in her brain, and she had no concept of how she'd ever questioned the answer. She snapped her eyes open quickly and spoke without hesitation. "You."

"Are you serious?" The words had come out of his mouth before he'd thought about what he was saying. He couldn't quite believe what he'd just heard, and his heart rate seemed to have tripled in the last ten seconds. However, the look on her face immediately told him that was not the reaction she was expected, so he rushed to correct himself. "I mean, are you sure? This isn't going to be easy, nor is it going to be perfect. I probably won't be as nice to you as he was, I won't be around as much as he was. I won't help around the house as much as he did and it'll certainly take me a lot longer to get used to having to put up with the little squirt than it took him. We're going to fight, we're probably going to screw up at work, and we're definitely, at some point, going to think we made the wrong decision. Can you handle that? Because if you're willing to take a chance on me then I can try and be the best I can for you…" He knew that was probably even less of the reaction she was expecting but he needed to be sure. He didn't want her to commit to anything and throw away a perfectly reasonable relationship – which she could, in the future, blame him for losing – without any prior warning. And he also couldn't let her in to his heart without knowing that she was in it for the rough as well as the smooth. For once, he was the one who was being cautious, and guarded.

"You really know how to woo a woman House…" She silently marvelled at how quickly the roles had reversed. It had taken only a second for her to realise that he was right – she couldn't move on with her life without even giving them a chance. She'd never be content with what she had while there was still an opportunity she could have something better. Every objection or argument she'd constructed was only an excuse not to take the leap of faith – a leap that would change everything, granted, but quite possibly for the better. And here she was, now persuading him that this was a good idea. She hoped this wasn't his kind way of telling her he had cold feet – up until now this had all been a game, a challenge for him to throw himself in to. But this was where it got serious, and he had to be ready for that. She did her best to keep the apprehension out of her voice as she spoke, knowing that he would sense her fear and it might spook him even more. "I know what I'm getting in to. I know what and who you are; you're the man I've been fascinated by, enthralled by, and in love with, for probably twenty years. I know you can't change: you can milden, but you'll never change. But I don't want you to-" she faltered, and hoped he didn't notice. It wasn't that she did want him to change, she just didn't want to make him any false promises. So instead, she gave him a promise she knew she could keep. "But I promise, I won't leave at the first hurdle. Or even the second. Okay?"

House did notice her correction, but tried to gloss over it in his own mind. If she had wanted him to change, she wouldn't have agreed to give them a chance. That's what he told himself, anyway, and he knew if he told himself the same thing enough times, he would eventually begin to believe it. He finally made direct eye contact with her, and looked in to her eyes silently, still deep in thought. And then he nodded. "Make it the third and you've got a deal."

"Shut up, come here, and kiss me; before I change my mind."

* * *

><p>A little over half an hour after the phone call, James Wilson opened the door to House's outer office with his elbow, whilst rearranging the collar of his white coat. It was only as the glass door swung shut behind him that he looked up and noticed that there was actually no-one in the room. As he turned back around to leave with a thoughtful although slightly confused expression, he was almost hit full in the face by the door being re-opened, causing him to stumble backwards as his best friend's three fellows entered the room at considerable speed. In order to regain his composure and regain apparent control over the situation, he cleared his throat and began to speak very quickly and professionally. "Ok, first of all we need to-"<p>

"She has an arrhythmia; we think it's caused by dilated cardiomyopathy. We'll have to call a surgical team to inserted a permanent pace-maker, and we need to find out what's wrong with her before another organ system starts to fail." Foreman cut across him as if he wasn't even there, and most definitely as if he was in charge.

This didn't annoy Wilson, but he had a pretty good idea that it was likely to irritate the other two fellows, so before the inevitable argument broke out, he raised his finger and spoke loudly. "Yes, yes, we'll call Chase to deal with the surgery. But that can wait five minutes – we need to discuss the possible options. She's got renal failure and cardiomyopathy, what could cause both of those symptoms?" For a moment, he marvelled at how easy House's job seemed to be.

The rather polite way in which Wilson embarked on a differential diagnosis compared to that of their boss threw each of the doctors from their stride. All three stood in silence, looking from one to the other, as if too confused to speak.

"Please? Look, I know I'm not House but this patient can not die just because he's not here. Because if she does, Cuddy will be on his ass no end, and while she's making him miserable, he'll make all our lives miserable." He waved his hands urgently in a gesture to encourage them to hurry up.

This incentive seemed to kick each of their brains in to overdrive, one by one. Taub jumped in first; seemingly he had something to prove even when House wasn't there. "It could be haemochromatosis – if her body is unable to process iron, then iron deposits in her heart would cause problems, and in her joints could explain the pains she's had all her life that Thirteen is so keen to attribute to her current condition."

Scowling, obviously annoyed at his dig and still determined she was correct about the added symptoms, Thirteen tutted at her colleague and shook her head. "An iron overload doesn't explain the renal failure. Glomerulonephritis does though. Her general illness could explain the primary symptoms of the disease and then the renal failure explains the gradual progression of the condition."

"Even if her filtration system is damaged, that's not the cause, it must be a symptom because it wouldn't cause heart problems." Wilson found himself extremely surprised when he as sucked into the vortex of the ddx and found himself suggesting conditions, especially when this was completely out of his specialty. "What if Taub was partially right – what if she does have deposits in her organs but they're not iron, they're proteins… It could be-"

"Amyloidosis." Once again, Foreman cut in with an extremely commanding voice and rushed on without hesitation, seemingly convinced he was right and there was no need for any further discussion. "We need to test, and if we're right we need to correct the damage we've already done by leaving her to get worse, and then find out what caused the reaction. Are we all agreed?"

His colleagues both looked on the verge of punching him, but were both remarkably restrained and self-disciplined – because in Wilson's opinion, Foreman probably deserved to be punched – and nodded their heads stiffly. "I'll go and get consent for a biopsy so we can run a congo-red stain for amyloid." Thirteen spoken efficiently but sharply, and with a withering look at Foreman, stalked out of the room with her heeled boots clicking against the linoleum flooring outside, in a fashion that reminded Wilson distinctly of Cuddy.

As the two male fellows gave him a nod and followed her lead, Wilson pulled his cell phone out of one of the deep pockets of his white lab coat. He scrolled down his list of contacts, a look of concern lining his face. It wasn't like House to disappear and leave his team with no way to contact him in the middle of a case, without any explanation whatsoever, regardless of how pissed with Cuddy he was. And House doing something out of the ordinary was almost unanimously bad, considering the man despised change. Wilson hit the call button once he reached his best friend's name and raised the phone to his ear glancing around the outer office in hope of finding some clue as to House's whereabouts. The phone then preceded to ring continuously for over a minute, before reaching the answer machine, where Wilson cut it off before it told him to leave a message after the tone.

He then debated calling Cuddy, but he knew that if House wasn't with her, and was actually hiding in order to wind her up, he would only cause chaos. His rationalization for that one was that they had the case under control, so House's presence wasn't imperative. Not yet, anyway. He let out a huge sigh and for the second time that evening, really hoped he'd made the right decision.

* * *

><p>They'd both slowly risen from the sofas opposite one another and began to move towards each other when House's cell phone started to ring. He cursed his luck silently and ground his teeth, but ignored the slightly tinny and muffled rendition of 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA that his right jean pocket was emitting. He continued to shuffle towards her – intentionally shuffling rather than limping, because it was at moment's like this that he didn't want to seem like a weak cripple to her – until she caught his eye and gave him that stern look that was all too familiar, and made her resemble a teacher reprimanding a student.<p>

"House, answer it. If there's a problem with your patient, you can't just ignore it because we…" Cuddy trailed off. She didn't quite know herself what the end to that sentence was; what had they done, what had they become over the last hour or so?

He shook his head earnestly, determined not to lose this moment. "It's Wilson, it's his ringtone. If there was an issue with my patient it would be my team ringing me, not him. And the ringtone would be slightly less gay. Only slightly though." For that he received a look of extreme disbelief, so he sighed and forced his hand into the offending pocket, fishing out his out dated cell phone by the small aerial. He then thrust it towards her, showing her the flashing display on the front panel showing his best friend's name.

Smirking a bit, she rolled her eyes and nodded in consent as if she were under immense duress. However, she was actually extremely relieved. After all the emotion and the confusion of their conversation, she didn't quite know if her heart could handle him leaving right now. She felt as though she needed some sort of validation that she'd made the right decision; and if she was left on her own so soon, all she'd do is doubt herself. Although, she had a suspicion his method of validating her decision might not be the one in which she was thinking.

He couldn't keep the smirk off his on face, as he tossed his cell onto the sofa behind him and reached out to grab her hips, pulling her closer to him. "Don't try and pretend you're not happy about that." Then, he let go only for a second, to slip off his heavy leather motorbike jacket and toss it on top of his cell. He acted as if this was a perfectly innocent action but in reality, it was to make sure that if it went off again, neither of them would hear it.

Even though she hated to admit it, she loved how well he knew her and how well he could read her. And just the feeling of his hands resting on the smooth curve from her hips to her waist made her heart beat rise exponentially. As he took off his bike jacket, she took in what he called 'the smell of a real man', and lifted her hands to rest them on the his chest.

They both moved in to kiss one another at the same time; both their heads tilted ever so slightly in opposite directions. It was intended to be soft and gentle, but second their lips collided, fireworks exploded and the chemistry was visible. It was different this time; it was filled with want, desire and dare I say it, love, rather than the tears and the fear that had tainted their last kiss. Even though technically nothing had changed – she was still with Lucas – that wasn't something that was on either of their minds in that moment. It felt as though she was charging electricity through every cell in his body and her taste and smell hadn't changed a bit in the twenty years that had passed since they had last been this intimate.

As their tongues battled for dominance like this was something they were born to do, shivers were sent up her spine when he moved his hold to the small of her back. In response, she slipped her hands lower to the bottom of his t-shirt, and slid them underneath, for no other reason than to feel his rough chest against her soft skin.

House took this gesture as allowance for him to do the same, so he tucked his hands beneath her jumper and rested them on her ribs, his thumbs moving in a constant stroking motion just below the wire of her bra. He could feel his control ebbing away by the second, having waited for this moment for so long, and he knew exactly where this was leading. He knew in the back of his mind that the chivalrous thing to do was to stop and make sure she was okay with this – that this was exactly what she wanted. But he didn't want to stop; he never wanted this to stop. So he justified it to himself with the knowledge that she was a woman of her own mind, and if at any point she wanted to stop, she'd tell him.

Stemming from his touch, she had butterflies dancing in her stomach she could feel her own arousal stirring in her abdomen like a creature that had lain dormant for too long. It wasn't like she hadn't had good sex since their tryst in med school, but she'd never had great sex since then. And since then she'd become a true believer that you couldn't experience that with someone who wasn't the right person. _Your _person. Then she asked herself the very same question he was thinking of asking her – was she ready to do this so quickly? But it only took a second to answer herself. Yes, she was ready, because this is what started their relationship in the first place and this was something she knew they were good at. Besides, she couldn't pretend she didn't want to. So she then, slowly to ensure she didn't hurt his leg, began to walk backwards towards the door of the lounge, taking him with her. As they moved, she wrapped her hands around the bottom of his t-shirt and tugged ever so slightly.

Her actions didn't even need an explanation to him, and the first time they broke apart since the kiss had begun was for him to raise his arms and allow her to pull the shirt over his head. When he sensed she was going to keep a hold of it to take it upstairs and keep the house tidy, his eyes lit up with that mischievous spark he had, he pulled it from her grip and threw it carelessly in any direction as they moved in to the hall. He wanted this to be just like the movies – the evidence of their desire all over the house, like he was claiming it as his own after another man had practically lived there. They reached the bottom of the stairs and it was only then they broke apart again – and a thought hit him. He didn't want to say it, but he knew that if he remembered, she'd remember at some point soon and he didn't want to have to stop if they'd gotten much further than this. "What about Rachel…? Can we still, I mean will she…?"

At that, she couldn't help but giggle slightly. It was so clear he had absolutely no idea about children or families. "House, how do you think married couples with kids have sex? Only when their children aren't in?" Something about saying the word that had been unspoken between them both, even though it was clear where this was leading, made her arousal roar in contentment. It was like someone had lit a fire, and everything they did or said was adding fuel to that fire, and the increasing warmth was spreading quickly throughout her abdomen.

That was all he needed as confirmation, and her grabbed her, pressed her body against his to ensure she could clearly feel how much he wanted her. He then took hold of the back of her jumper, tugging it over her head – the neck was tight and therefore messed up her hair as it slipped off, tossing it over the banister, which to him made her look even more sexy. He then nudged her up the stairs and followed her up as quickly as he could. He enjoyed the games, the battle for control their inevitably was between them – their conflict at work translated into immense, deep passion in the bedroom.

She knew that by the time he reached the top of the stairs, she'd already be in the bedroom so she decided to speed up the process and slipped quickly out of her own jeans, discarding them into a corner. The moment he entered the room, she grabbed his belt and beginning to unbuckle whilst she felt his hand snake around her back to her bra clasp.

Before undoing it, he couldn't help but let out a soft 'wow!' accompanied by a whistle, as he looked her up and down in her black lacy underwear. He saw that for this he received a slight raised eyebrow but a seductive smile, so he continued. "Jesus Cuddy, you look even better than you did back then and I didn't even know that was possible."

"We're not at work now, call me Lisa… But I'm glad you approve." She took the opportunity while he was distracted to drag down his jeans and allow him to step out of them. She knew he was always going to be self conscious about his leg, but she didn't want to make a fuss because she knew that would make him more so.

He winced upon knowing what she could now see but he didn't want her to know how worried he was, so he unhooked her bra and let it fall to the floor in order to distract himself. "Are you going to call me Greg then?" He cupped his hand around her right breast, beginning to rub it attentively as he supported her lower back with his right hand whilst pushing her back onto the bed and kicking the door shut behind him.

Arching her back in to his touch, she tried her very best not to let on what he was doing to her. She wanted him, now, but would never let him know that if she could help it. She couldn't let him win. "If the situation calls for me to say your name, then most definitely…" She couldn't help it, he made her feel incredibly sexy and she loved the look on his face as his desire was building up inside him.

Silently House cursed her – he needed to keep himself under control because he wanted to enjoy every last bit of her body first, but she was making that extremely difficult, and intentionally so. In retaliation, he grabbed the black fabric of her thong and ripped it off her, before placing sensual kisses in the crook of her neck and up to her ear lobe as he moved his hand slowly down her body. He felt her reach out and try and grab his arm when she realised what he was doing but he got there before she did and once he was there she didn't have the will power to stop him.

As his right hand reached her sex, all she could do was quiver under his touch and try to stifle a moan. She could feel her folds were slick as he rubbed two fingers on and off her clit. Over and over again. She knew he was punishing her for teasing him but that didn't make the punishment any easier to handle; in fact, it just made him even sexier. She needed his touch, as it sent sparks throughout her body and was making her legs tremble, so against her better judgement she thrust her hips towards him in an attempt to force him to give her the satisfaction she needed. It almost worked, and the sensation she received made her grab on to the headboard so tightly that her knuckles went white. "Oh God, Greg." But it wasn't enough. It had brought her so close to the point of no return already, that's how much desire twenty years of foreplay created, and he knew it.

That was why he stopped. He wanted to drive her mad, insane, wild – he wanted to hear her say his name with her voice full of desperation and lust, over and over again. And he wanted to make her wait; so he knew by letting her calm down ever so slightly would give him the opportunity to play all over again. That and the fact that seeing her in such a state made him so hard that he wanted to screw her senseless right then, and he had to resist.

His fingers leaving her body only made her growl in frustration. Her heart was pumping like crazy and her body had braced itself for an incredible orgasm, and he'd let that slip away from her. She knew it was intentional, and was more than determined to repay the favour. She took his moment of hesitation to her advantage, even though she was still recovering, and forced his boxers down to his ankles where he could kick them off. She then took his erection in her right hand and began running her fingers up and down its length, causing him to groan in deep satisfaction.

He knew this was probably one of the hardest things he was ever going to have to do. He waited so long to feel her hands on him, and she was so unbelievably skilled in what she did that he never wanted her to stop. He let himself enjoy her movements for a moment longer before pulling himself out of her grip. He spoke through gritted teeth. "Jesus, I hate you so much." As if to reinforce this point, he pushed her back up the bed and began rubbing his thumb in circles over her left nipple as he scattered kisses over her hips, moving closer and closer to her core.

There was an incredibly witty remark on her tongue in response to his accusation but all thoughts were wiped from her mind as she felt his tongue make contact with her folds. She closed her eyes and her breathing became immediately laboured as one of her hands found its way to the back of his head and her fingers ran through his hair. He swirled his tongue around, over her, and then quickly from side to side over her clit, increasing and decreasing the pressure systematically. Each change in pressure caused a high pitched cry of pleasure to escape her as he built her up in the most frustrating way he could, and she tightened her grip on his short hair.

Her grip was marginally painful but nothing could make him care. Her taste was sweet and abundant, and her hold on him only told him without words how much she didn't want him to stop. He could feel her abdominal muscles tighten again in preparation for riding out the waves of her climax and her mouth open to let out a scream of ecstasy, and then he pulled away. He knew he couldn't last any longer without screwing her because her moans were driving him insane, so he was almost relieved when he saw that incredibly determined but extremely turned on and desperate look in her eye as they locked gazes.

She knew she shouldn't have expected anything else but she cursed him for dragging her back from what felt like it would have been one of the best orgasms of her life. And she wasn't going to let him do it again. She was going to get what she wanted, and needed, and she was going to teach him what happened when he drove her wild. Her arms were still weak as she pushed herself in to the sitting position but she managed to summon enough strength to force him over on to his back, though she had a suspicion that he wasn't resisting as much as he could. She pinned him down and straddled him, her voice almost like a growl. "You want to play that game do you? You'll never win." She then lifted herself ever so slightly, and allowed him to slide in to her before groaning in relief. She was no longer stifling her noises of pleasure, she wanted him to hear exactly how good she was feeling. She then began to ride him – slowly at first, but once she felt him hit her g-spot, she saw no reason to torture herself any longer.

It was possibly one of the difficult but incredible things he'd ever witnessed. Every move she made caused him so much pleasure, and it was multiplied a million times by every expression of her own pleasure she allowed to happen. She was holding him to the bed so hard that he couldn't move a muscle, he could only watch her bring herself back to the edge whilst grunting in his own intense pleasure. Watching her, and feeling her was bringing him so close to finishing but then it all happened so fast.

She was teetering on the edge, and it only took one look at his brilliant blue but extremely hungry eyes to send her over. Her walls tightened around him and that alone with the sight of her orgasm and her beautiful grey eyes sent him along with her. She felt things in her body she'd never felt before and it was mind-blowing.

"Fuck, Lisa." Groaning her name was the best feeling in the world and as she almost collapsed on top of him, he felt himself slide out of her. Their limbs were tangled in one another's as the both as the both breathed heavily to restore oxygen to their systems. The sounds of chests heaving slowed and eventually they both descended into silence. But it was a happy, comfortable, content silence.

Finally, once again, brilliant blue met fiery grey as they shuffled so she lay on his chest with his arm around her back, and Cuddy was the first to break the silence. "So… now what?"

"I always knew you were once, twice, three times a lady."

She could almost feel his suggestive wink and smug grin as he felt like the cat who got the cream, and she reached behind her, grabbed a pillow and hit him with it. Besides, quoting Lionel Richie was so tacky. "Oh, shut up." But she couldn't help but grin too.


End file.
